Wishbone
by Bovineorbitor1
Summary: - I am the hero of this story, I don't need to be saved. - Gotham is a volatile substance and things are changing. Bat/Cat, post TDK
1. Chapter 1

Prelude

_1_

_And when _

_Were the tides of fortune so golden, and when_

_Was the slow dying sun so bright a candle,_

_A consolation? And how long we are_

_in the letting go._

_1_

The two of them established themselves in a time of tales (she smiles at that) and are used to having their own narratives pressing in on every side. These are the stories Commissioner Gordon's son sometimes requests of his father, which are chiefly about reassurance and heroism and certain things a certain vigilante gets in a (probably) less fictionalised form from his butler, and which she needs too, occasionally. (She gets them, for the most part, from him). There are newspaper articles and magazine articles and there is a lot of word of mouth: rumour springs up at even the suggestion of their passing.

Mostly they play to the crowd, but there is also something they tell each other, or the night tells them both – hard to be sure of anything, in this city, at this time – except this:

It is a love story, if not a romance.

1

There's a romance to it, this perusal of the night. She saunters out into the wicked streets and she picks and she chooses and she saunters back home again, admittedly not in time for tea. She is a shadow upon the rooftops and a menace to the good citizens of Gotham and she is an emblem of feline grace: none of them ever know what hit them.

Except him. He generally knows when she hits him.

She remembers the first time, and the way The Bat hit her back without compunction or chivalry. The sudden solidity of a roof against her back and how she thought of scuffmarks on leather, the way he loomed so huge and immediate into his backdrop of sky: just as large as life, just as close.

She hadn't been afraid.

_The Cat twisted to her feet, almost dancing in the momentum of her own motion, and smiled her predatory smile._

_"Tsk, tsk. It's bad manners to hit a lady," she said, recalling as she did so the long tradition of sassy females using the line, if not the exact tone._

He hadn't been impressed.

_"I'm an advocate of equality," he replied, a little bit in the long tradition of stoic males and their non-responses. Her smile, a la femme fatal, suddenly became a grin._

He'd almost caught her that night, but she had a name to gain, besides a preference for playing hard to get, and so for her next act she threw herself from rooftop to rooftop in a mad semblance of flight - two footed, no wings. He had given her a good chase and, always preferring to exchange rather than receive gifts, she had given him the slip.

They were been in the papers the next day. Very exciting.


	2. hello, nurse

This evening was all sound and fury: bones breaking as he slammed into a wall –

_crack_

-registered their protests distractingly loud, but the Detective was still working through the mystery of where the blood was coming from,

- through the suit, black on the dirt dull ground, lost in shadow and cape and the blurring of his gaze, and

- someone was laughing.

He couldn't make out the usual ring of maniacal victory through the buzzing in his ears and the mantra that kept repeating between them - _Get up - _I'm trying - _Get the hell up –_but it provided a soundtrack to his efforts, exhilarated and approaching. _Get _up_. _

His arms shook as he applied them to the floor, weak in a way he didn't remember being for a long time - damn these treacherous elbows - and then he was heaving himself unto his side instead of his feet. What was the correct sequence of muscle and bone, joint and tendon and willpower, which the universe required of a man before he could stand up and spit in her face?

Oh yes.

He pulled himself into a vague approximation of a crouch and tried to think of a way out.

"Hey, Batman!"

Not good.

The crocodile man loomed, as he seemed expressly designed to do, and Bruce managed to co-ordinate a duck behind one of the cars parked on the riverside. The blood trail was probably a clue as to his whereabouts, but at least it was hard to focus on.

There wasn't any pain. He was a little bit surprised about that. Worried, in fact, which was probably a sign of concussion because presumably the less pain the better?

The thin thread of lucidity still stitching him together sadly informed him it was not so, and that he needed to get out of there immediately. He resisted it. _Have to t__ake care of Killer Croc first. _

Croc smashed past a van to his left, and he slid further round his car. _Actually, n__ever mind. _

It had been the mob he'd been after anyway, and that had gone off all right. Shame about this little coda. _Can't deprive Gordon's unit of all the work, after all. _He could hear the river behind him, a low groaning undercurrent to Killer Croc's rampaging.

A huge, misshapen shadow fell across his musings. Bruce turned his head to check his facts and Killer Croc took the opportunity to punch him with enough force to send him flying several feet. He came down hard on his back and his body sent him a sharp note about all those previously broken bones.

_Get up. _That was what it always came down to, wasn't it?

Croc's foot landed on his chest, baring oversized teeth in Jack O' Lantern relish and administering carefully to the agony in his ribs with the slow, deliberate application of pressure. He struggled helplessly for just a moment, then drew his forearm across his opponent's armoured leg and let the hooks in his own armour bite deep. He'd long since mastered the mechanism for releasing them. _Lucius: big Christmas present this year. _Croc roared and stamped his foot, and Bruce, gasping, managed to grab the offending limb behind the knee and _yank. _

The bigger man's balance failed him. He toppled forward, Batman dragging himself out of the way just in time, and then there were a few moments in which they knelt almost face to face, immobile and staring. The rumbling of the river was louder still around them.

_First to blink loses._

Bruce's lungs seized suddenly and convulsively. A racking cough he couldn't hold back splattered more red on the pavement, and - most immediate concern - made him close his eyes for a fraction of a second.

He didn't even see Croc lunge, although seven hundred pounds or so of moving crocodile man was surely difficult to miss, and then there was immense weight and force – the sound of a safety rail snapping - and the two of them plunging together into the river.

1

Everything looked green underwater. He could see streetlights caught in the bubbles which were floating idly to the surface, tinted green. A pleasant effect. Killer Croc also looked green, but then he always did.

_Air_...

Croc seemed bent on gaining his attention by punching him repeatedly in the head as they sank. _I'm half dead in a river with him, which should at least make post-mortem identification more difficult. _Always a silver lining, as Alfred would say.

Fewer and fewer bubbles were appearing. That was alright because they were beginning to lose their attraction anyway: he just wanted to sleep. He wished that the other man would stop jolting him.

Batman's mask fractured, and Bruce sucked in a mouthful of water, fingers flying up to his temple to find a large shard splintering off. He wondered how much force it took to break the helm. It was a detail he ought to have known. Note to self...

_Need air! _

His fingers closed around the shard, angling the sharp side inwards.

_You know what else Alfred always says in these situations, _he thought, pulling his arm back:

_Go for the eyes._

_1_

Thunder rumbled softly through the various window panes of Gotham city, shaking out whatever fragments of reflected light the night retained and perhaps pressing further weight into the dreams of those who, clinging to their sanity, used the hours between three and six to sleep.

Selina held up the necklace admiringly, examining its glitter. She had been half expecting her favourite hero to show up and attempt to intervene, but this bauble was a more than adequate consolation prize for the lack of trouble she had had in the taking. She stepped carefully out of the window and made her way up to the rooftops.

Hmmm. What next? Home, or another target, another chance to brave the Bat?

Home, she decided. She had to wash her hair.

There was a thump, and a groan. She stilled, then crept stealthily towards the sounds. At first there was nothing of note anywhere on the roof, but then he pulled himself up, slivers of pale skin visible under the armour, and collapsed face first at her feet.

Duly noted, she thought.


	3. small favours

Later he would not be able to remember much about the execution of his escape, only that the river had seemed sure that its acquisition was final and that he himself had disagreed. There was some subsequent difficulty as Gotham's heartstream caught him by the cape and pulled, trying to bring a long drawn out drowning to completion. Killer Croc had faded from the struggle until there was only him and the pitch entrapment of the river, the countdown of his lungs and a longing for the anchorage of steady ground.

There was no pain. No pain. Only a lack of time.

Then land, rising like the prow of a ship in a wilderness of water, or at least like something to latch on to. The heights of his city came back into view, remarkably bright, uncharacteristically bright – possibly glad to see him. Ascension was an awkward process. Several times he almost fell back in. His cape was heavy, heavy on his shoulders; it clung to the river, but he arched his back and scrambled frantically with one boot and followed the frozen train of his breath, and then he was free to fall forward. He used this momentum to pull one knee over the lip of the bank and while the other leg dragged behind, it had to follow the general trend.

Then landing, or beaching as it seemed to him; an undignified collapse after he heaved himself over the point of improbable return.

It's hard to breathe. To stay awake. Can't Stay Here is overruled by exhaustion. Can't Stay Here persists, the Batman imperative sounding in his head like an Alfred or a Wodehousian variety of aunt. He can't allow himself time to lie still, to pin down various arguments against ever moving again.

Can't walk either. Crawl. His dragging leg sent envoys of agony upwards to find purchase in his spine, snapping the rest of him into rigidity. He pulled a piece of equipment from his belt and applied it to the limb, not gently, not sparing himself - rudimentary support, another mental expansion of Lucius's Christmas present. He must have looked ridiculous, hauling himself along the ground until – finally – he came to a small side-street. Grappling gun. Aim for the rooftops and the safety and solitude they represent.

He knows he's left a trail from the river. Knows most of this bloody city would tear him down if they could, with a few shining exceptions – call Gordon, tell him about Croc. Call Alfred, tell him you could use a hand, or two, or whatever number he employs when your back's turned. But first, rooftops, and an arduously slow getaway. Grappling gun. Aim. Fire. Hook up the line. The wrench as he was propelled upwards, and the muffled thwump as you crash into the wall. Damn. Up again, always the target. Roof the new surface.

For a few instants of ignoring the burn of his shoulders and abdomen as he hauled, he was underwater again, unable to breath yet inexplicably seeing bubbles. They changed as his hands closed over the ledge he'd been reaching for: seeing stars instead. He huffed a sigh of relief and let his head drop forward until the feeling that it was about to crack open at the temples subsided.

When he looked up again the stars were gone. Catwoman coming forward with her wariness on one sleeve and her curiosity on the other had blotted them out.

Almost he groaned.

There were worse potential encounters that the razor sharp cards of fate could have dealt him. Catwoman had never, to the best of his recollection, blown up a building he was in; she hadn't yet shot him, tried to drop a truck on him or poisoned him with weaponised hallucinogens. (She had kissed him once, however.) And while none of this meant that she would not take the opportunity to remove a major hindrance to her operation when it was handed to her on a platinum platter with an apple in its mouth, she was at least not likely to monologue at him while she did so. An encore for silver linings, Alfred.

There was a faint thud as his head hit the roof again, but he was too far gone to hear it.

1

Selina crouched by the side of her unusually supine hero and rapped her knuckles between the upstanding ears of his mask. Nothing. She heaved on his shoulder instead, flipping him onto his back. This got her a very faint groan.

Progress.

"What am I going to do with you?" She'd have just as soon not have made this catch: she knew trouble when it bled on her boots. His eyes flickered open but only gazed at her dully even when her fingers gently brushed the broken edges of his mask, curious. Most of his face was still covered but she could see strands of dark hair and a sharp line of cheekbone, and if she investigated further she might see more. Instead she stood up and looked around quickly, then crouched again and poked at the damage to his armour.

"Batman." His eyes semi focused on her, rather wide and disorientated, and she noticed the hugeness of the pupils. "You can't stay here, and I'm not taking you home with me unless you buy dinner first."

This at last seemed to restore him to partial awareness and he reached clumsily for his belt, extracting a device which had a distinctly phone-like quality despite being couched in the customary Bat-style.

"Where are we?" he rasped, although the sound had considerable croak in it too. She reeled off the street name – look at that: a charitable citizen in Gotham. A temporary state, no doubt. She didn't like seeing him like this.

The phone flicked open and he angled it away from her, ever cautious, before intoning the street name into it and snapping it shut again. An awkward, wary silence shouldered its way in between them and she frowned a little before deciding that the discomfort in this situation should be all his. Judging by his grimace, he'd come to the same conclusion.

"Well, if that's all," she said brightly, and prepared to leave him to whatever rescue he had coming. She could spy, she supposed, but it seemed likely to be tedious and was too obvious a cheat move to appeal to her.

"Catwoman." She glanced back from the edge of the roof, wondering if he was going to request more assistance or try to confiscate her ill gotten booty by giving her dizzily disapproving looks. Instead he sat there, shoulders hunched and head down, crumpled and unbatmanish, but with his dilated pupils alight with cold assessment. And he said only, "Thank you."

She jumped off the roof because really, that about summed it up.

1

"Stop fussing, Alfred."

"I'm afraid that would be betraying the spirit of my commission, Master Wayne."

Bruce snorted, opening one eye to examine his butler ministrations. He wrinkled his nose mock critically. "Well, in that case, you could go a little easier."

Alfred, refusing to be distracted, merely cocked a brow and continued with his task. "I could say the same, sir."

"Touché." Bruce let his head fall back, still a little dizzy. The frown which was usually waiting in the wings on these occasions of ragdoll maintenance took on a thoughtful caste. "She could have killed me. It would have been ludicrously simple in the circumstances."

"Doesn't sound particularly like Catwoman's modus operandi, if you ask me, Master Wayne."

"Maybe not. Still, she had no reason to try and help." His fingers tapped out an irregular rhythm until Alfred placed an arresting hand on his arm and stared meaningfully at the bandages he'd just finished wrapping on that hand. Bruce laughed and shrugged, apparently pushing his musings aside, although Alfred knew him too well not to know that his mind would still be clicking through options even as their conversation went elsewhere.

"I think I should probably avoid the public eye for a while," the billionaire said, glancing ruefully down at himself. Alfred swallowed almost imperceptibly before agreeing.

"I shall construct an alibi, Master Wayne."

"You have too much fun with those things," Bruce grumbled. "We need to find out about Croc's whereabouts and warn Gordon about him, then I need to -"

"Pardon me, sir, but I believe the only two ways to end that sentence are 'go to hospital' or 'go to bed', and I would like to cast a vote for the former. I am not convinced that I am an adequate medical consultant on these more serious occasions."

"Come now, Alfred, you make an excellent nurse. You have just the right unobtrusive bedside manner."

"Go to bed, Master Bruce."

"Yes, sir."

1

Isis leaped onto Selina's lap and curled there up decidedly, receiving the petting her owner offered with a stately indulgence that prompted a wave of amused affection in the rather damp thief.

"I'm not worried," Selina informed the back of her cat's head, rubbing at the bases of her ears and smiling at the rumbling purr which emerged. For all Isis' feline condescension she was not quite as prone to satirical glances as Bruce's confidant was, and Selina therefore could turn her mind to more practical matters with impunity. "He'll owe me. I wonder if he'll act on it."

Behind her the television speculated about a string of robberies which had plagued Gotham recently, and threw out suggestions and analysis on the identity of the mysterious Catwoman. It was possible to detect a faint note of exasperation in the Mike Engel's voice. She grinned.

"It should be interesting," she told her cats, and their purrs echoed the sentiment.

1


	4. interlude

Normality pressed as close as a second skin.

It slumped heavily in every room; impenetrable as the fumes which lodged in this part of the city and tepid as the dishwater she had up to her elbows. The smell of past meals hung about whether the rooms were aired or not or even if you stepped outside: it was a district steeped in garlic and resentment. The young woman scrubbed mechanically, face in neutral, and kept time by tapping her foot on the floor.

It was getting dark outside. She didn't look up at the skyline often but the dusk unfurled its cosmic peace-offering soft against her lowered eyelashes, its first stars winking hopefully. The last plate clinked against the washboard and dripped in lazy discord with the taps.

She braced her forearms against the sink and let herself stay that way for a cluster of moments, foam bubbling against the thin skin on the backs of her hands and bursting in disregarded rainbows, body language tired and face shuttered.

Then, with an instant kindling of motion, she was gone from her small kitchen and bounding up the stairs, whirling through carefully established hiding places until her hands, still damp, closed on the suit. She tugged it free.

Time to change.

1

Catwoman sauntered along Gotham's rooftop spine, sending shivers through the collective imagination of its good citizens and carefully reviewing her plans.

Recently she had been focusing on hitting high fliers, with only the occasional valuable museum curiosity thrown in, but tonight she intended to target the large exhibit on ancient Egyptian art they had set up earlier in the month. Catwoman liked to think of herself as an appreciator of art, but truly the reason she was targeting this was the amount of security set up for it. Nothing she couldn't handle, but more visceral than batting away the high tech solutions her rich kid clients favoured.

This was going to be _fun, _although actually getting rid of her haul would probably have its share of aggravation_._

Highs and lows, she thought unrepentantly. It was the way of the world, and a rule she was more respectful of than the ones which had to do with free lunches.

She leaped between buildings, riding the impact of her landing and converting it into speed: faster; always faster. The dull mantle of the evening rolled off her shoulders but she sped up once again, as if afraid that it would run ahead of her into tomorrow.

She had reached a satisfactory pace when the sound of screaming dragged her up short.

Oh, it was a common enough sound here – no-one reacted with real horror anymore; mostly they hunched their shoulders and talked a little bit louder because acute hearing was a dangerous skill in Gotham – but it had seemed to come almost from below her feet and it had been so very young. So young, in fact, that not to investigate would have crossed a line that she, however capricious and committed to her own freedom, did not wish even to approach.

She slipped into one of the darker patches of shadow and peered down into the alley. It was like attending a private screening for a rather subpar genre film – all grit and stereotypes. The hulking thug, throwing a scrawny, probably drug addled teenager against a wall. Threats. _No, I have no money. _Pleas for obviously nonexistent mercy. A blow probably intended to silence the boy producing another incontinent scream, and then the gun aimed suddenly between his eyes making an even more violent silence. The older man grinned as tears dripped off his victim's chin, and Selina calculated from the shadows. Most of the old hands in his job would have finished with the boy one way or another by now, or perhaps wouldn't even have bothered with him, but this one was clearly fascinated by the fear he provoked - an enthusiastic amateur, one of those who had fizzled up out of nowhere to fill the manpower vacuum that was Dent's legacy.

With his other hand he pulled out a flick-knife.

Selina sighed.

The thug turned around when she dropped into the alley behind him, his expression starting out indignant and becoming even more so when she relieved him of his gun. The knife too made rude advances so she kicked it out of his hand, then replanted one boot squarely in his face. His nose crunched audibly and he staggered backwards into a wall, though not fast enough to avoid the precision of her oncoming fists. She had always enjoyed being inventive with her knack for robbing men of their faculties.

Business concluded, she turned to face the boy she had saved. Up close he looked only about thirteen years old, and he was trembling and sniffling compulsively despite the blank expression on his face. She kicked the thug again without taking her eyes off her find, and pitched her voice low.

"Do you live near here?"

A nod, and a new flood of tears marking a translation of terror into gratitude. The expectancy on the child's face made her want to sigh again.

"So go," she said, and chased him home as fast could be managed by hustling and occasionally lugging him along by the scruff of his neck.

Even when rid of his weight, she carried a sense of the intervention on her back all the way to the museum, remembering the clatter of the boy's shabby home and the statistics which dictated that he would have another such encounter soon - without the oversight of a Morally Dubious Samaritan – remembering why she chose to step in only ever on her own terms.

People have to learn to help themselves. It's the only survivable learning curve.

A leap onto one of the hideous gargoyles which had been installed opposite the museum, almost silent despite the force which she'd put into it, and then she was grinning again. Her stony companion's distorted features hung by her face and she patted him fondly on the horns as she brought her binoculars to bear. Oh yes. This would be fun.

By the time the fifth guard had been eluded and the involuntary shudder of laughter she dropped on him for his troubles had been bestowed, the last traces of worry over Gotham's natural emissions tracking her into the stream of her own life had been swept into their proper places and her focus was entirely restored.

Still, she thought once she'd got home, through the glow of satisfaction which sustained her at the end of a successful caper, it would be nice if Batman came back soon. She could use a real challenge and, after all, now he owed her double.


	5. sensitivity

This had been a good day.

The needle ran seams through the gaping hole in his shoulder as he sat closemouthed and hardly invested, for all the world that elderly seamstress who juggled every aspect of life with her hands dancing beneath her notice. There was a slight, sharp satisfaction as the sequence of pain ran over and he found himself able to relax into it, proving in the face of his own doubt that his situation was manageable and his fingers capable even though, as Alfred was wont to say, he often made a mess of things by trying to reach too far.

Being in the suit always elevated his temperature and the damp cloth he used to clean the blood off made him flinch a little- cold, and it almost tickled, which was vaguely embarrassing. He gritted his teeth and pretended not to mind. This sensitivity lasted for about half an hour after he clambered out of his armour and its deliberate insulation. When he had a case to continue with it went ignored, but for public appearances he factored it in. It wasn't hard to translate the shock of re-immersion into something more like the hedonistic appreciation of the playboy.

The rest of the routine was easier. Shower, pull on party clothes, calculate intellectual angle. Usually all of this came first, but tonight he'd managed a double-booking. He was just lucky his social circle favoured late nights.

As he pulled on a dress shirt, the harsh angles of his face smoothed themselves out and his awareness of his body became looser - skipping over bruises and grazes and all the other things his butler disapproved of. Softer lighting would erase the dark circles under his eyes and diligent practice had given him a distracting smile, and so that took care of everything.

Since he was now careless he left his bow tie undone and went to greet his newest date, who pounced on it and the opportunity to literally breathe down his neck. He gave her attributes a cursory leer. She blushed and giggled, disturbingly schoolgirl-ish. The leer only just survived an unexpected, unreasonable stab of annoyance.

"Everything arranged to your satisfaction, sweetheart?" he asked, mockery of the pair of them only half edited out of his voice, but he compensated for it by trailing his fingers across her silky smooth cheek and rubbing lightly at the deepening blush with one thumb. She gave him a look that was not so schoolgirl-ish after all and he grinned at her, once again imperturbably sunk in his most armoured persona. She took his arm and they made a relatively subdued entrance, only forty five minutes late to his own party and only one girl, too – he caught some of his guests giving him evaluating looks to see if he was contagious.

As a matter of fact he felt fine.

They moved over to one clump of conversation and commandeered it, his date flattering a counterpart for her glittering necklace with an air of general complacency, lightly touching her own throat. He wondered vaguely if that was a hint, watching the trinket's capture and manipulation of light with interest. Fake gems, he was almost sure, and a glance at the man accompanying her strengthened the impression.

Giles Wilson was exactly the sort of man who would be taken in by a jewel scam; in fact, almost everything about him begged for misdirection and exploitation. He was thin and gawky and puppy-dog eager to please, with an adolescent exuberance in his wealth and relative fame which made him bounce benignly through attractive women and throw his money with haphazard enthusiasm at whatever good cause came to his attention. Bruce thought of him as a softened caricature of their order, and occasionally wondered if that made Giles a potential alter-ego for some super-villain somewhere. Once, embarrassingly, in the feverish aftermath of a difficult and violent chase he had suddenly found this piece of whimsy convincing, leading to an obsessive investigation into Giles's backgrounds and habits which had lasted until Alfred had dragged him bodily away from the computers and scolded him into bed. He still flushed a little thinking about it, especially when the other playboy looked as benevolently at sea as he did now.

"Ah, Brucie, are you listening?" his date asked, tugging on his sleeve. He realised, depressingly, that he didn't know her name. Not that he'd forgotten it, but that he had never actually learned what it was. Alfred had picked her out and he hadn't been listening when he was told the relevant information – had been pouring over the details of a case involving a gang committing serial rape and murder, the resolution of which had given him tonight's injuries.

In the immediate aftermath there had been vicious satisfaction – _good day _- but now, looking at this girl whose name he didn't know, he felt sick.

_Victoria. Julia. Dorothea. An attempt on Miss Andrea Watts, who smacked one member in the face with a fairly weighty handbag and broke his nose just as the Batman arrived. _

"Huh? Oh, of course, Erica. Hanging on your every word." He dragged his attention back to the here and now and shoved the intrusive concerns of his centre-self back into privacy.

_Susan. Katrina. Erica._

"Brucie, my name's Pearl," she said patiently. He nodded and grinned.

"Sorry."

"That's okay, I'm sure I'll find some way to be memorable," she purred, leaning in closer. She had excellent taste in perfume and applied it with impressive minimalism, he noted, and her use of make-up was also understated but effective. She was clearly well practiced at this game.

Alfred was going to be in so much trouble when he got home.

"You have lots of advantages already," he said, eying them. She patted his cheek, wafting tasteful scent and maidenly coyness in equal measure. Having pushed the leer about as far as he could in such a public setting he dialled it back; tried to regain some personal space by way of slightly tipsy wobbling. Mid lurch, his eyes fell on the mocking face of one Robert Westridge.

The wobble didn't go off entirely according to choreography. Pearl grabbed his arm and giggled again in her deliberate way, and Westridge's silent amusement intensified. The man was a rare animal in these particular surroundings; hanging back on the outskirts of the party with a pretty dark haired woman who was probably his secretary and not his date, quite clearly passing judgement on every other partygoer. In the interest of peace and harmony Bruce let his gaze pass on as though he had found nothing noteworthy in Westridge's open contempt, but Giles, damn his congenial soul, had followed his eye line and spotted the skulking wallflower. He plucked him loose with frantic flapping and hopeful grins, and Bruce's heart sank. Westridge was almost always confrontational when they met; a bone fide idealist who was offended by Brucie's antics and refused to indulge them, and, worse, a man with no capacity for small talk.

The former was admirable, in a way, but both were inconvenient.

He was sure a tellingly disgruntled expression showed on the other man's face as he approached, but it was polite enquiry by the time he arrived. Giles swung an arm over his shoulders and beamed delightedly at him, which must have been a blow to that politeness, but it only wavered very slightly.

Bruce swigged his drink and tried not to look provoking.

1

"It's just _terrible,_ I don't know what the police are doing with their time. They're treating her like some minor threat when it's _obvious _she'd going to keep striking until she's caught and put away, and it's only a matter of time until _we're_ the targets!"

Mutterings of agreement dominated their circle's communal voice and Bruce let his face reflect a little of the indignation which was the general response, kindly first modelled by Pearl but apparently universally appealing. She squeezed his arm with slightly worrying triumph and he thought about the tidbits of information he had absorbed – entirely by accident – when Alfred was briefing him on his love life. Pearl was a moderately popular actress, one who lacked staying power and was probably increasingly aware of it. That accounted for the tightness of the grip upon his arm and the loud opinions: the effort she put in to being memorable. When not clinging she used her hands as though playing to the back row. There were small crimps of stress around her mouth and eyes and she had to be about five years older than she wanted to be thought, which was still young to be so desperate. Underneath the well applied perfume she smelt of alcohol, but was too calculating to be drunk.

She tightened her grip on his arm again and he sent her another swift, appreciative look which lingered in all the right inappropriate places. She giggled in that high pitched, erratic way. Pretending to be tipsy, he thought. Probably wants out of here despite herself. Westridge snorted – he'd been doing that a great deal over the last ten minutes of conversation and Bruce privately applauded his restraint – but said nothing, and it was just possible she didn't notice the derision.

He was none too pleased to be present either. Batman had already been back on the streets for over a week before Bruce Wayne reappeared outside of tabloid speculation, but it had been taking more out of him than usual and he was, bluntly, exhausted. Tonight's injuries would probably not have happened if he'd been in better shape, and, as Alfred liked to remind him, things would only get worse if he kept pushing.

The fascination with Catwoman among his social circle wasn't improving his mood either. Her motivations had been the main source of his headaches during his time off work and she was still too much of an unpredictable agent not to make him uncomfortable. He was not going to think of her here...

...But she was stealing a considerable amount of attention from fashion and dieting and, yes, Batman too, though he was inexorably linked with her in the public's eyes, and he kept wondering if she would be flattered.

_Why would she help me?_

It was maddening.

"I'm sure they'll catch her soon," he said. The actress smiled up at him and visibly bit back disagreement, but it didn't stop her long.

"And just think; she could be anyone, anywhere. That's the worst of these freaks."

Westridge's secretary, whom he hadn't bothered introducing, nodded in grave agreement.

"She could be in this room right now and we wouldn't know," she said, leaning in and lowering her voice confidentially. Despite the words themselves, she was more subtle in her mockery than Westridge, eyes wide and credulous and only the shrewd bite of them as she watched the reactions to her statement gave her away. He bit his lip to keep from smiling as everyone else looked horrified and her boss snorted again.

Pearl made a sharp gesture with her glass which was probably meant to convey fellow feeling but could also have been annoyance. The drink sloshed dangerously close to his jaw and he swayed away slightly before re-entering the conversation.

"This is an unlikely place for her, isn't it? She's more or less the antithesis of a gold-digger. She skips over all the work and goes straight to the pay-off, and she doesn't have to bother with divorce settlements afterwards. Pretty smart play, in my opinion."

There was a fricative silence, in which everyone looked at him, then Westridge's secretary started to laugh and everyone looked at her instead.

"What?" Bruce asked.

She just went on laughing.

1

"Well done, Mr Wayne, I think you've managed to offend everyone within earshot with one comment."

Lucius smiled at him with customary slyness and kept his voice down, both things Bruce appreciated.

"You know how I'm always angling for efficiency, Lucius," he drawled back, winking over his friend's shoulder at a pretty young socialite who kept giving him nervous looks. She blushed and almost dropped her champagne.

"I think you've mastered this particular application of it, then." Lucius said, chuckling, but as amusement gradually faded off the older man's face the concern underneath became visible, and he had to fight to keep from flinching away.

"What's wrong?" he murmured, still smiling a broad smile for the benefit of the watching multitude.

"How serious was it?" Lucius asked very quietly. The length of his employer's recovery time had alarmed him.

Bruce frowned briefly and considered joking it off, but lying to Lucius was almost as bad as lying to Alfred and probably equally futile.

"It could have been a lot worse," he said eventually, using his real voice, and then he switched into the playboy drawl. "There were some bones broken and Alfred told me I ought to cut back on the spelunking for a while, but you know how it is, right? You have to get back out there, keep moving. It was a bad time to take a break."

"Alright. But be careful, Bruce. I've got used to you dozing through important company meetings. I'd miss you if you weren't around to do it anymore." In his friend's face was the clear understanding that it would continue to be a bad time, that, in Gotham, it was always a bad time.

"I wasn't planning on going anywhere," he said mildly, rather touched. Lucius patted his shoulder and they both thought about what had been on the news that morning.

"I think you've misplaced your date, Mr Wayne," Lucius said finally, aware of what such disappearing acts usually meant and pleased to be able to offer Bruce an excuse to leave alone. The younger man pounced on it happily.

"So I have. I'll just...head off and find her, shall I?" he said. Lucius shook his head as he watched him go, and Fredericks came up behind him.

"Always on the job, our Bruce," he said satirically, and Lucius couldn't help but chuckle.

1

Sarah Miller meandered through the penthouse's corridors, slowly pushing off her smiling mask and letting a new, more pensive face bloom in the vacated space.

Her smile was known in some circles as Pearl D'Artagnan, but she knew she would continue to be Sarah Miller underneath for as long as her elderly mother insisted on remembering her name. _Even when poor old mum is gone_, _she'll still be calling me Sarah in my head and I'll be Sarah until I'm eighty_. She wondered sometimes what she would still have when she got there. No Bruce Waynes, that was for sure. At thirty two she was already pushing her luck.

Still, it had been a nice enough evening. Bruce was charming company when he wasn't talking, and his obvious appreciation was flattering. She would make a few papers as arm candy of the week and while she knew it was no way to spark a career revival, if she could hold on to him just a little while she might have some ammunition in her auditions – so to speak.

Any day now, she was going to make it – if not big, then at least medium, and that would be enough.

"Oh!"

Bruce's startled expression upon rounding the corner and seeing her indicated that he hadn't been turning his place upside down in searching, but he didn't have another woman on his arm and maybe that was a hopeful sign.

"Brucie!" she exclaimed, reclaiming Pearl D'Artagnan from the ether and slapping her on; throwing out her hands and rushing towards him as if she didn't have a raging headache and a strong inclination to go home.

"Pearl," he said, and that was pleasure in his voice, wasn't it?

He caught her hands.

"What were you doing back here?"

"I..." For some reason lying was harder out of the noise and the lights and the glitter. "I had a headache, to tell you the truth. I thought I would just...find somewhere quiet..."

"Of course." He put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed, the rich smell of his cologne tickling her nose. "I can have Alfred take you home if you're not feeling well."

"Well." There was no hint of dismissal in his face, only guileless concern. "Maybe that would be best."

It seemed to her that Bruce's butler had her tucked away in one of his employer's fantastically expensive cars within about a minute, but maybe the headache was distorting her perception of time. Alfred was very nice, although she spent the drive focused on not throwing up over his upholstery rather than admiring his many fine qualities. He did see her right to her door and she was barely regretful that it wasn't Bruce himself there, because while he was sweet enough – when he wasn't talking – he was not one in whom the spirit of chivalry was deeply embedded.

She closed the door with a sigh of relief and kicked off her high heels.

1

His hands shake just a little as he taps the keyboard; an instinctive reaction to pulling off the suit and re-submerging himself in his own humanity rattling his teeth as the cold of the safehouse skims the sweat off his skin and he pulls up numbers; names. Names.

His eyes stay on the screen as Alfred rides the elevator down into his makeshift cave, stark in its inadequacies, and he keeps on working while the butler coughs behind him.

"Sarah Miller is dead," he says, as flat and matter of fact as he can make himself. Her records sit in front of his nose and tell him in detail about her activities; her history; where she went to school.

Alfred knows immediately. "Miss D'Artagnan?" The older man sounds appalled. He saw her go in her front door not eight hours ago.

"Her real name." He by contrast has been successful; his voice is very flat and matter of fact indeed. In the midst of hypersensitivity, he feels nothing. "She's the second mid level actress in a week and the manner of death suggests a connection. It seems likely that we're about to have another string of attacks within in a fairly short time frame unless Gordon or I find the killer first."

He remembers the indifference with which he had regarded her but crushes and discards his guilt. It is irrelevant to the case. This woman hadn't needed his interest as a validation; she had needed not to have been clubbed to death in her own kitchen.

He has no time to rest.

"I'm sorry, Alfred," he says, finally looking up. "It looks like I won't be taking a break for some time now."


	6. Pivotal

_Tra~la~la_

This city does not sleep: she fears the extinguished evening of calmer places.

_~la_

Her neon glow - too brash to be plaintive - intercedes with the night for all the obvious features of day, holding on to activity with the same jealous care an aging star might show her youth in some other story. The reason is the same in both cases: a nervous simulation of life.

She is hectic - fever hectic - though not quite lit with the enforced sincerity of the fatally ill.

_Tra~_

The death of her squat, spent candle is imminent but not inevitable, and the dancers and the mob bosses enforce it as they try to escape it; all together now, all unknowing.

_~la_

This has been so for many years as Gotham teeters coyly on the edge of the abyss, singing show tunes as she pivots and spins and turns upon herself; en pointe on the brink. Going nowhere has never been such an appealing alternative to going places fast.

_~La_

The Bat, in his self imposed dark commitment; he hopes to be a cure. Fairy lights and the glamour of the new century cut out in his wake, an organic reversal of electrical interference. Gotham's newest villainess isn't too worried, though. No-one's cut through her illusion in a long time.

_GothamGothamGothamGotham. _

She thinks she'll fit in here, sitting astride her crocodile's broad back and eying her admirers: the carnival just left town and this city of freaks needs entertaining.

1

On one of the screens of Batman's computer, the police sorted through evidence with tired diligence. On another, the Dark Knight's own calculations and investigations flickered a quickstep with their antagonistic partner, time, who always led and also always chose the tunes.

He was starting to notice a disturbing trend.

1

Selina hummed softly under her breath as she sorted through Westridge's schedule, mentally noting profitable looking ventures for herself as she made more concrete record of his. Her employer sat a few feet behind her, glaring at his scrolling computer screen with customary grumpy focus. His was a mostly silent if brooding presence which amused her and occasionally even provoked mild twinges of guilt. Periodic irritated grunts were probably intended to check her humming, but since it was difficult to be certain and she wasn't paid quite well enough to be omniscient as well as efficient, she raised her voice instead.

He pushed his face closer to the screen and grumbled under his breath, crippled by courtesy. She span a pen around one finger and grinned.

Robert had turned over a politeness leaf for the new year, but last night's absurdities had precipitated a crisis for the poor thing. She privately suspected that part of his reluctance to speak this morning was the fact that he had bitten large chunks out of his cheek's inner lining during the Wayne segments of yesterday's conversations. Nonetheless, he'd managed to tell her on the way out that the look on the playboy's face as she had stood laughing helplessly at his remarks was going to sustain him into old age, and she fully expected to get a raise for it. Like most of her audacities the thing had been a payment in itself, but Robert couldn't help being an old-world type gentleman and looking on it as a character flaw made her cheerful exploitation of his goodwill and naivety easier.

She still regretted her other memorable comment of the evening. It had been far too direct, too obvious: the kind of winking aside which indicated the theatricality of the moment and shook up a complacent audience . A mistake. No one could be allowed to see through to the performance.

With this ideal of opacity in mind she performed a quick reformation of character and deposited Robert's schedule under his nose, waiting for the usual protests with an air of grave professionalism. Instead he looked up at her with a wary, unfocused expression that transmuted itself several times over between worry and less definable emotions, and she was almost surprised back into visible calculation.

"Have you been watching the news, Selina?"

"Occasionally," she said. Not cautious, just neutral.

"You know about all these women, then."

She did know. Wayne's date of last night had been the latest and it was all over today's headlines. She knew it with a distant awareness settled on the certainty that although they had spoken once they had never actually met, the girl's masquerade having been far more overt than her own. If you allowed yourself to be distressed by the death of every stranger in Gotham you risked having no time or resources for your own affairs.

Robert was probably distressed. The next time Gotham's elite met up, everyone would be pretending to be.

She was expecting a caption on the horror of the event but he trailed off there, as if he'd already made his point. It took her a moment to realise what it was. She nodded once, not encouragingly, and started to walk away to attend to other duties.

"Just be careful," he said into the surface of his desk. "Stay in after dark, that sort of thing. Don't wander the streets alone. Be careful."

She paused for a heartbeat at the door, then let it click shut behind her so that he couldn't hear the soft encore of her laughter.

1

"Gordon," the deep voice rasped. The Commissioner took a few seconds to locate his partner and then reproached himself for being out of practice. "We have a problem."

1

One of the pleasant things about working at Wayne Enterprises was the surprising degree of respect with which the executives tended to treat their subordinates, following the lead of the universally adored Mr Fox and the carelessly benevolent Mr Wayne. Jessica was therefore not accustomed to fetching coffee for her bosses, but today she considered it an act of mercy rather than an indignity.

Mr Wayne emitted a faint groan as she came in but made no other comment, and she set the cup down a few inches from his nose so that the coffee could introduce itself. He raised his head from his arms after only a few seconds and stared at her blearily, but she had to revise her stance on explanations because he continued to look utterly befuddled even after she made several meaningful gestures at the desk.

"Coffee, sir," she said. He started and almost knocked it over; she almost allowed a giggle to pass her lips. He laughed himself, weakly, and took a delicate sip.

"Thank you, Jessica," he said, rubbing at the back of his neck sheepishly and giving her his most beguiling grin. "Late night, I'm afraid."

"Yes, Mr Wayne, I guessed." Another thing that made her job easier was that Bruce didn't seem to mind people being satirical at him, even when he noticed the barbs. He seemed to accept his place in life as a figure for entertainment over any other kind of function. Goodness knows what he'd do without Lucius to navigate his circus act of pratt falls.

"I brought you a newspaper as well." It would probably be pushing it to suggest he looked at the cartoons, though.

He took it from her gratefully, knuckling at one eye, and then froze almost undetectably for an almost insignificant slither of time.

"Is something wrong?" The recent string of murders was dominating the front page, of course, but that was no surprise to anyone, not even Bruce. He flicked a few pages in before answering.

"No...it's fine." This was punctuated with a frown. She peered at the inverted page.

"Catwoman?"

"Hmm," he said. The article he was poring over seemed to be saying something about the masked thief turning briefly to heroism for a small boy in the Narrows. At this point, Jessica thought, it was hardly surprising what the crazies took it into their heads to do, but Mr Wayne appeared unnervingly absorbed.

"I suppose we need all the help we can get," she volunteered. And considering that Batman had apparently gone the opposite way, why not?

He fixed her with a wide, blank smile and put the paper down.

"I suppose you're right," he said. "Now. Um. What am I doing today?"

She guided him gently through his meetings, and felt vaguely relieved by the return to form.

1

The race is back on, heart and lungs and feet competing in the constancy of change and she's moving so fast across the sky that she might as well be flying. He cheats, of course, but she can still keep ahead.

Everything blazes when they are on the run: there is a surging awareness of every detail to the point where pain - sharp in limbs and lungs and in the breath-grated back of her throat - seems an integrated part of the whole; a tang in the exclusive taste. Gotham's neon monuments were made for their navigation but she's sure that if the whole city went pitch black neither of them would falter, not even for a second. The world is suffering from motion sickness and less assertive than it might be - blurring and bright and easily shucked off, like standard issue handcuffs.

He's falling behind. It's possible that he hasn't fully recovered from his injuries but she has no intention of waiting for him. They can catch up some other time.

Batman comes to a stop, balanced on a disreputable looking old chimney. If she had cared to look back she would not have been able to make out his expression despite the enhancement of her awareness, but it is fixed along pensive, oddly uncertain lines which belong more to his alter-ego than the Dark Legend who should have occupied this setting.

He turns around and heads back towards the Narrows. When she is home and clear she wonders why he gave up so easily.

1

1

1


	7. Bargins

Though florescent lights had been busily at work bleaching out the coffee toned, nicotine flavoured dimness of Gotham mornings for several hours now, there was still a hush of opening time in the museum. It was almost empty; sadly deprived curious young minds making maiden voyages into history, and, even more so, a sense of history itself.

Gotham, not confident of a future, was indecisive with its pasts.

The People - whoever they might be - were free to enter – no charge, no schedule, certainly no queuing at the door - but Time, patron of the establishment, was patiently waiting for an appointment.

In its absence, the museum resorted to neatness. Nothing about the place was casual beyond the walk-in rule and that curious inattention to focus and perspective, that forgotten linearity, which it perfected straight lines and clean blank walls to hide. Even the little placards with their crisp black text looked as though they had been subjected to vigorous behind the scenes vetting.

Bruce Wayne should have looked out of place in the middle of all this well ordered neutrality. Bruce Wayne -Tm- was out of place. Temples of knowledge and educational intention weren't his set and in any case he favoured crowd scenes – there's no-one here. He's an embodiment, or at least facilitator, of the eternal party - he was almost redundant without it, uncomfortable and untidily human in the absence of his supporting cast and his myth –Tm- and his legend (Bat Man). The boy at the front desk hadn't seen him come in and the old man sitting on the bench, newspaper in hand - didn't care. A public image can't exist without its public.

Instead, a ghost is pulled to the foreground of this visitor and resuscitated.

He could hear his own breathing. It wasn't cold enough indoors for visible proof but there was so little audible interference that each exhalation might as well have crystallised, exposing that essential hidden artefact of his nature and putting it on display for people not to look at. He pushed his hands into his pockets and felt alienated, solidly here for the first time in a long time, unwatched but with the constant potential for someone to be watching.

It happened occasionally that in the middle of working his neon beat Bruce would suddenly slip up and show his hand, or, to be more accurate, his face – react for a second like some figure from elsewhere who had an interior tuned in to the exterior. Disorientation and silent maintenance was usually the result until he reassembled the right Bruce Wayne and deployed him, but sometimes he was afraid that someone saw, or else himself was afraid of seeing... - who knew? He was uncomfortable in his own company when in public venues, some things being all right in their place but not acceptable for general consumption.

Today he needed to be himself, here. The experience made him acutely uncomfortable.

The man on the bench ruffled his newspaper. He looked to be one of the homeless, who generally faded into the grimy walls of the city by eliciting in its citizens the same head shaking resignation as graffiti, but in this case set off to advantage by contrast. Presumably he was there because it was warm inside and an unlikely place in which to be harangued, since he seemed uninterested in the displays or anything in fact beside his newspaper. Bruce would have seen him anyway, but now he had the option of courteously ignoring the other as the other politely disregarded him.

He looked at the exhibits instead, pacing back and forth between ancient Egypt and Meiji Japan, thinking in confused jumbles of priority and comparison and lack - rather than absence - of time. He really was out of place here. Even the old man on the bench, ravaged by moments, sat tranquil and unresisting as though the museum offered a respite, some kind of welcome distance which Bruce Wayne cannot, will not catch hold of.

There were signs everywhere instructing visitors not to touch any of the few exposed items, but he came to a halt beside an exquisitely crafted Egyptian cat and felt the aggravating bite of something tingling in his fingertips; a ghost of tactile avarice. He knew why she would target this place: a crisp prickle of defiance against the insistence of the signs, the thrill of cheating the increased security measures he had catalogued almost unconsciously while pacing, the appeal of the merchandise which depicted her emblem with delicately crafted divinity. He pulled away abruptly and shuttled through the Viking section: he didn't want to get inside Catwoman's head, only to anticipate the one move she might make which would now concern him.

He slowed eventually, even stopped to read the plaque for one of the insidious multitude of artistic urns. It was too broad a description to be of interest.

Next exhibit, some old coins. There were shapes on them, scarred beyond recognition, (_Harv. No_.) and so he looked at the additional information there too.

Sarah's family were making funeral preparations. Reporters kept trying to interview him. But he still saw her mother there on the news, curled into herself, thinning frosting curls and wrinkles folding the angles of her face over and over, making that helpless gesture with one hand and for her own reasons not crying.

That gesture, every time they ran the story, cataloguing the repetition. Himself, raising an arm to block out the flashing from the cameras and hurrying in unusual silence, head down. Only a few days in the interval. That gesture. His hurrying avatar retreating from it on the screen. He had let it play on one of the computers while he worked, unspooling its irrevocable message(_couldn'tsavehershouldhavecouldn'tdidn't,Sarah. Rach- No._), the newspaper recording the thief's rescue sitting on the desk at his elbow. It helped him to reach a conclusion.

Ah – that's the face, rough and troglodyte in outline, unreadable. Next exhibit, which jumps forward a few centuries but is at right angles to ancient Rome. He wanders between the remains of uniforms. Next.

Other families had been ousted by the newest in the line of dead, of course, although the names stack up and they were all pretenders to fame in their own way - notable in their high profile mortality, blurring in the glare of crime rates. The upper circle were uneasy, under attack from thieves and murderers all at once, unsure which concern to emphasise as a greater violation of their order.

Priceless items spread out from the billionaire in easy squares, hovering in their dimensionless space without urgency. The old man laid his newspaper over his knees and stared absently out of one of the museum's high windows before pulling half a sandwich out of one pocket and disentangling it from his handkerchief. He looked down with warm approval, as at a satisfactory breakfast or perhaps a pleasant reminder of last night's dinner. Bruce paced back and forth in the wealth and the dust and tried to come to terms with a choice he'd already made.

Hesitation was unendurable very quickly.

The boy at the desk was no longer so distracted with paperwork as Bruce headed for the exit: round eyes fell squarely on his face and then widened further, and he could only manage a small smile and a nod at the exclamation of his name.

He wondered what the significance was of Bruce Wayne making this choice, while Batman stayed resolutely in abeyance.

1

Dahl sauntered over to the prisoner, the cigar in her hand dipping close to one glassy eye as she leaned in and snarled.

"You thought you could bargain with the cops behind my back, did you?"

A complex interplay between the cigar and its dabs of smoke took place in the dramatic pause she had balanced just so at the end. The glowing tip hovered for a moment in the air before the blank terror of her victim's face, then she tossed aside her prop and came up with a knife and a nasty grin.

"You know, our organisation has become like a family to me." _Liar_. "But every family needs a little discipline now and again." The stock dialogue rolled off her tongue; easy, easy, easy. She raised her knife to the traitor's throat and watched with satisfaction as muscles shifted. Swallowed once before continuing.

"I really am sorry for this," she said, and ripped through to blood on lace, one short knife away from that dying expression - eyes widen slowly, the pupils unravelling, the stage lights slowly fading out – out, damn spot – blood on lace -

"Miss Dahl?" Croc tapped respectfully on her bedroom door and she span around to greet him.

"Waylon, come on in."

He entered, shoulders pulled towards his centre but still making the room look tiny in comparison. She beamed at him, scrubbing briefly at her face with one sleeve.

"Well, comrade, what news?"

His eyes flickered to the space behind her and stayed there as he made his report. She enjoyed the deference, although after a while something in it made her feel vaguely uncomfortable.

"Alright, Waylon, that will be all," she said finally. He half shrugged one shoulder and sloped off, letting the room return to its correct dimensions.

She turned back to the mirror.

1

The victim component of his rescues have played it more and more sceptical lately. Fear, of course, was a natural result of his newly minted murderous reputation, but there was something more – some shadow of contempt haunted their faces, or haunted him when he looked at them. It used to be that the intended targets of whatever attacks he interrupted would call after him as he departed, thanks or enquiry or the occasional proposal of marriage. Now they huddled back as far as possible until he was out of sight.

It didn't matter. It was better that they had hope in rebuilding the system than faith in the lone vigilante operating outside of it. It didn't bother him.

Batman slammed his foot into the side of the thug's knee, hearing the crack and the agonised scream with some satisfaction. His next opponent was already backing away, gun wobbling in his hand, when the blow to his abdomen doubled him over. The gun dropped to the ground.

Silence. Broken Knee had his fist crammed into his mouth to quiet the inclination to scream. His companions were huddled conveniently close together, clutching their various injuries, and raised relatively little fuss when Batman tied them up.

The family he'd just saved were, with unfortunate symmetry, also huddled together, goggling at the semi-detached shadow which flickered menacingly around their attackers. The youngest child, who looked about eight years old and had pigtails, started to cry. So did Broken Knee.

If people were afraid of him, they wouldn't try to emulate him. If people were afraid of him, then Harvey's legacy was intact. It didn't matter. It didn't bother him.

As long as the criminals were afraid too, he was fulfilling his purpose.

He let the night swallow him again.

1

Something was different this time. He was just standing there watching her in a way which reminded her of the tail end of her first little rescue, and it seemed he had that in mind too, because -

"Dabbling in heroics, Catwoman?" he rasped. Despite the deadening effect of his vocal self mutilation she thought she detected a tang of curiosity.

"However shall you show your gratitude?" she purred, inching slightly to her left and watching him compensate so that they were still facing each other directly. The two favours she knew she had on him carried through her calculations and ran maintenance on her smile's mechanism, which was all that he could see of her face in the dark. She wasn't going to make her move just yet.

He seemed fixed in the same cautious stillness. The sensible thing, of course, for her knight in tarnished armour to do would be to discard his debts – this was a cutthroat city, after all, and he had to know that Catwoman would never disadvantage herself by playing fair. But he was looking at her and that curiosity was still alive in his posture, oddly tentative, and if it was honour or pragmatism which stayed his hand she couldn't tell. Still, she hadn't chosen to move yet. Not just yet.

"I'm considering the issue," he said, a little softer but harsh all the same. She sighed, impatient and without internal conflict to water down her impatience, which presumably gave her an advantage.

"Let me know when you've made up your mind, then," she said, and turned away.

"Catwoman."

More promising.

"Have any criminal organisations made you an offer recently?" he asked flatly and she thought about teasing him over _offers, _the kind he had in mind and his ability to top them, but something in his voice compelled her to meet him with equal gravity, so she just said,

"No. Why?"

"Someone is trying to retake the streets," he answered, dragging, as if reluctant to share even a sentence worth of information with someone like her, but also with a measure of disgust not meant for her at all. She grinned her best elusive, feline smile.

"Am I one of your informants now?"

"I doubt it."

Very accurate, detective. But still.

"The mob's reasserting itself?"

He made a noncommittal noise, which was a new option in his vocal arsenal. "You'll keep an eye out?"

She started to circle again, dipping in and out of the shadows with amused symbolism, watching his mouth tighten and his eyes narrow in annoyance.

"Are you asking me for a favour, Batman?"

Pause. "Yes."

He got the satisfaction of seeing her look surprised for a moment before she took back her poise, but he very wisely didn't try to make anything of it.

"And what do I get in return?" She hadn't expected to enter into this kind of negotiation with him, but was prepared to work with anything.

"I'm no longer investigating you," he said, still flat and a little terse but decisive. She would have expected more reluctance, but it looked as though pragmatism was on top tonight.

Interesting.

"I see. So I get free reign with the rich and their pretty baubles if I – what? Feed you information? Rescue more little moppets? And what makes you think I won't take advantage of your generosity and work for the mob whilst under your sanction? "

"Unlikely. You've always been freelance before." The wilful patterns of her robberies no doubt gave her away. How much of a profile did he have on her?

It didn't matter.

"Oh? So you're not commissioning me now for justice?"

"No." A huff of breath which might have been a sigh in another setting but here was a kind of capitulation.

She could see why he was asking: Gotham's organised crime was positively hydra-esque and the cases must stack up. She herself had no investment in the messier parts of the criminal underworld – so why not, after all? There was nothing binding in a favour and this semi-truce would give her more freedom to move. Probably he needed the time and freedom to ignore her, too, and she could work that around to her advantage eventually.

For now she just nodded. "Fine. We have a deal. I'll keep an eye out, but no promises."

"Agreed. For now."

They parted, honour mutually satisfied.

1

He discovered from the next morning's paper that the museum had been hit again.

1

1

1


	8. ponderous

The park was Gotham's best attempt at idyllic; an almost convincing piece of portraiture which only gave itself away through over-attention to detail. The uniform banks of roses, the clipped hedges, the evenly spaced commemorative benches were exposed as unreal by the absence of real people, who would no doubt have messed them all up by now. Still, it was a useful shortcut Overhead, and with fine dramatic flourish, the sky was merging stylish salmon pink with the blood red light leaking over the horizon. Selina stood comfortably enough in the duality, warm tones turning a few pale instances of exposed flesh a rosier colour than they were naturally.

The city was unveiling a Harvey Dent memorial tomorrow morning and her attempt at taking the scenic route had brought her alongside his elevated, shrouded figure. She stopped for a moment to look up at him, not out of respect so much as query, since he'd been all mystery and sleight of hand even when still alive – the honest politician. Now, packaged for the masses, he resembled a cartoon ghost. The salmon tinted statue-covering snapped back and forth in the wind like a flag, generating its own applause.

Even she had believed in something -not wholesale redemption – something; some idealistic exertion. It remained to be seen what effect martyrdom would have instead.

Selina was not a good citizen. She was uninterested in the category. But everyone who lived in the city long enough understood - had heard Gotham's heart knocking on their ribs; knew enough to recognise what it was safer not to know; was implicated. It wore on you, this city, like fate.

She had her own ways of escaping predestination, but those that tried to take the whole city with them held a certain grudging interest for her, and even she had believed in something.

...Ha.

That campaign slogan: such a rambunctiously political gesture, now masked by grace - an thing people carried around with them as though its conversion to Gotham currency (harsh, maybe enduring)had made it transferable. Some of them still wore the buttons. Tomorrow there would be black armbands and solemn faces, true believers mingling with the professional mourners so effectively that you couldn't tell where sincerity began and where it ended, and were tempted to write off the whole collection without inquiry.

She inquired - professional sceptic confronting the cold remains of the altruist, as the white shroud clapped in the wind and waited on tomorrow's speeches. And of course, there was no answer.

A few people were starting to wander through the park on their way to better things, or to taxi rides home. A man she hadn't seen approaching stood on the other side of the memorial, mostly hidden by the motion of the sheet, but staring upwards with all the indicators of reverence. Dead saint Dent was silent.

Selina distrusted the deification. His manner of dying was more interesting than the retroactive importance his death apparently gave his various political punditries, though perhaps not more interesting than the vacuum itself.

Because she read people well, and the Batman had not murdered Harvey Dent.

It was perplexing, and a little annoying too: Commissioner Gordon, commended by all the world as an honest cop, passing on the string of lies or misperceptions with an unflinching attitude in which the distaste was obvious to those who knew how to look. She'd never asked the Bat, in their various cat and flying mouse games, because it was blatantly clear he'd never answer, never even enter into the spirit of the mind game.

And it all had the – the ring, the taint - of altruism.

She frowned at the figure opposite, still staring upwards, still hard to see in the advancing dark, still frozen in unfiltered reverence. He shifted slightly, as if picking up on her censure, and lowered his chin so that his features became easier to make out.

They both started with recognition, then paused, each unsure whether or not to address the other. On Selina's side the surprise was rather more developed, as Bruce Wayne's sudden materialisation out of obscurity seemed all the more unlikely due to the odd time and place. Something about the surroundings made him seem fleetingly alien, as though their previous encounters and the countless media appearances he had made had blurred his features, and for the first time the effect was missing. But this impression itself must have been artificial - a construct of the evening's atmosphere - because it lasted less than a second before the original took back its place.

She gave him a quick, semi polite smile in order to cut off any conversational sallies he might throw in her direction, and started to walk again. He began talking anyway.

"I know you from somewhere," he said, coming into step with her and gracing her with what the highest circles considered an engaging smile.

She gave him her own best, matching and negating and giving away nothing, and picked up the pace.

"Really? I'm sorry, I don't remember you. I'm sure it was a pleasure."

He ignored that, focusing on the voices in his head, which presently found expression as he snapped his fingers and declared:

"Oh, I know! You're Rob Westridge's girl. You went with him to that party." He grinned again at this feat of memory: a personal best.

"I'm his personal secretary." Primness would have been better, but the laugh stayed in her throat and she thought her expression was neutral.

"Oh yeah? He couldn't get a date, then. Well, that's alright, you're pretty enough, I'm sure nobody guessed."

Seconds ago this man had been staring up at Harvey Dent's veiled statue with unmistakable fervour, as if consulting an oracle on an issue of monumental importance. Such an alliance was doing the newly minted minor divinity no favours.

"Thank you," she said.

"Pretty impressive, isn't it?" he said, gesturing vaguely back at the statue with a surprising demonstration of telepathy.

"I suppose so," she said, "although I don't think Mr Dent looks enough like a gargoyle to truly fit with Gotham's spiritual aesthetic."

The playboy engaged with this point of view for a few seconds.

"Only a few parts in the historical districts have those now," he said finally. "Personally, I never go down there. So, uh, what's your name, madam critic?"

"Selina Kyle," she said, giving it up in the full expectation of future forgetfulness. His smile attempted to look interested but happily enough dipped several notches short of the mark, and his eyes shifted distractedly over her face, possibly looking for encouraging signals. There was only about thirty seconds space between them and the park exit.

"Well, you – damn!" he said, holding out a hand and catching the first few droplets of rain in his palm. "Alfred could have warned me it was going to rain today."

Soothsayers and sarcastic remarks ran through her head, mingling like scorn and pity. But presented with a Deus ex machina literally descending from above, she chose not to quibble. It had only been two days since rain had appeared last, but the effect was that of a fever breaking.

Wayne pulled indignant faces, water beading on his cheeks.

"Maybe we should find shelter somewhere," he said. Significant eyebrow movements. "Getting wet will _ruin_ these shoes."

"I don't mind the rain," she said.

"Hey, Miss Critic!" he called after her. "Are you coming to the ceremony tomorrow?"

"No." She didn't bother to raise her voice or look around.

He stood there as the downpour gained momentum, surrounded by the smell of dust and rain.

1

"Here, Kitty, Kitty," the deep voice rumbled. Catwoman leaned against a wall with an annoyed sigh and waited for Killer Croc to find her.

He turned the corner soon enough and grinned, deliberately exhibiting his huge, jagged teeth. Presumably she was meant to be impressed.

"You wanted to see me?" she asked, inspecting her claws.

"That's right," he said, attempting to come closer. She flicked him a scornful look and slid away. "I'm here to make a deal."

"And what makes you think I'm amenable?" she asked. He shrugged.

"Lot of money involved."

"It's the principle of the thing," she declared, playing for melodrama, and then waved a hand regally. "But go ahead. Unveil your deal."

He was by now used to being co-opted for theatrical scenes, and went on unfazed.

"There's a...client, looking to hire. You get cash for your goods whenever you want, hot or not. No searching for a buyer, no selling at knock off prices. Not much interference otherwise, except you'd have to hit a few places on demand, for good pay. Not often. What do you say?"

"Well, you're unusually verbose today, Killer. Do I get to meet this client?"

"No. The buyer doesn't trust you."

"Then why employ me?"

"Everyone wants the best." He shrugged again. She sketched a bow.

"Would this be our new pretender, by any chance?" she asked. "Trying for a monopoly on crime?"

"What's that to you? You'd get your money."

Mock-pout. "Do I also get time to think about it?"

"Be quick, Catwoman. If you agree, make your next target the oil tycoon Patrick Bates. We'll be in contact."

He vanished surprisingly quickly for such a huge figure.

1

She did go. He saw her from his privileged position with a tiny flicker of surprise, not that she had lied to him but that she had needed a second shot at evaluation. Hers was the coolest look he'd ever seen turned on Harvey, alive or dead – the quality of reserving judgement, which fascinated with its unfamiliarity - here, in this city – though sometimes he attributed it to Rachel, and sometimes not. Sometimes not.

He kept his eyes on the crowd, not on the symmetrical face they were crowding. Black armbands and tears and faith.

The taste of bile at the back of his throat. He swallowed hard on ill timed, inappropriate anger, and searched again for a calm sceptic between breakers of people. There she was. She too watched the crowd, perhaps laughing in her head at the vagaries of billionaire playboys or at something she read in the paper that morning, perhaps a tiny shard of perspective in the fog of everything. Perhaps a person he'd met twice about whom he knew nothing.

He bit his lip, and then felt annoyed with himself for realising the emotion.

He should not have come. There was a whole collection of responsibility waiting for him back in the mist; he needed to stop taking Alfred's advice on getting fresh air – the old man never took 'me time' himself, after all. Whose time was it, spent in almost empty parks, in mourning?

He'd wasted two days, or a few hours of two days, or two kernels of time which could have contained revelation – to hover over an emotional crutch. Bruce Wayne's emotional crutch.

He'd needed to see this. Needed to watch it transition from theory to fact. And now he'd found his first doubter, who strangely enough anchored the reality of the symbol more fully than those out there wearing their Harvey Dent buttons on their sleeves. The onus of convincing was on the only truly incorruptible kind of standard bearer - the dead kind.

They had done the thing. It remained now not to get caught.

In the crowd, Selina Kyle looked at those around her with cool assessment. He did not watch her watch them. He listened to the speech and thought about Rachel. About how it could not be personal. The central mistake of making it personal. About how, eventually, he would find time to grieve, as was psychologically necessary. About a gesture, repeating over and over until the clockwork mechanism ran down.

And Catwoman.

Catwoman was a throb of guilt amongst the many he didn't have time for: an unwelcome suggestion that after all his hard learned lessons he still could only foresee consequences in the broadest of terms. She hadn't contacted him since that time two nights ago, which was understandable enough: the criminal element had never operated on his schedule. And yet...

The first male victim of whoever was targeting actors had been taken this morning, breaking two trends at once - age as well as gender. Just turned twenty two, whereas all the others had been women in their thirties or older. The thing had been botched, in Batman's professional opinion – for some reason less planned and more hurried than the other attacks, as though something had happened to spook the schemer. He suspected some connection to this new organisation of criminal activity, which brought him right back around to _no contact yet –what if I was wrong_?

This compromise, though necessary, made him acutely uncomfortable for a whole extravaganza of reasons.

"Bruce?" Giles nudged his arm lightly. "You're kind of pulling a face."

"Huh? Oh, sorry." He schooled his expression quickly. "I was just thinking about what Harvey would have - " _grief, sudden and inconvenient – not yet, not now – _"said about all of this." _What Rachel would have – _

No.

"Yes," the other man said mournfully. "I guess he'd be proud. I never met him, you know, but he was good, wasn't he? People never agree this much on anything."

"Maybe that'll be enough," Bruce said, unable to restrain the platitude, unable to look at Giles' commiserating, credulous face for long. _Their murder shocked the wealthy and the powerful into action...and Gotham has limped on ever since. _

So much for the best case scenario.

He turned back to the people as they executed fragments of his will, looking for expressions of resolve, of hope, of anything other than saddened confusion.

He also looked out for Selina Kyle, wondering vaguely if she had come to any conclusion, but she had either left or vanished into the multitude and Giles kept asking him questions about Harvey, so he gave up the search fairly quickly.

1

"Here, Batman." She dropped silently onto the roof behind him.

"I know." He didn't turn to look at her. "Do you have anything?"

"Yes." It was interesting the way his posture moved from just tense to battle ready without really seeming to do anything, and with the cape obscuring the works. "I was approached by Killer Croc with the offer of regular paid work for a 'client', details not given."

"Could you arrange a meeting?"

"No. They seem to be under the impression I'm not trustworthy."

He turned to look at her with a distinctly quizzical air, an odd break in character which made her throw her head back and laugh before completing her account.

He reverted to stillness once she was finished, head bowed in thought.

"If we were to prolong our arrangement," he rasped slowly, eventually. "If you appeared to accept the offer -"

"Commissioning me for justice, Batman?" she asked, whiplash fast as he hesitated, and the set of his mouth turned grim with advance understanding. "You're a nice enough guy, but I'm not taking down a crime ring for you. You and Gordon can work your magic, but I've done my part."

Silence, then a grudging nod. "Alright," he growled.

She'd intended to vanish, but paused to look him up and down with amused almost fondness - as one regards a reliable fixture, accepted on the basis of regularity, which has just revealed a new and unexpected facet.

"Getting lonely, hero?"

He stepped to the edge of the roof without any response at all, not even a twitch.

"What happened to Harvey Dent?" she called. He jumped.

"That's what I thought you'd say," Catwoman muttered, and followed his example.


	9. Peregrination

1

_seven days earlier:_

It was only now that Coleman Reese had gone away and come back again that the delicate underlying structure of the standard issue Wayne Enterprises business meeting was apparent. He was trying hard not to notice.

"Unexpectedly high returns - "

"I think we can congratulate ourselves on a -"

"-Break for lunch?"

Fox, of course, managed proceedings almost lazily from his vantage point at the front of the room, his warm presence encouraging everyone to be frank and direct –

"We are men of the world, after all - "

To contribute freely to discussion –

"I personally am doubtful of the benefits of- "

"Well, I have to say I totally disagree-"

"No, I agree, we should _definitely _break for lunch."

To conduct their power struggles almost in the open, in fact. And in doing so, without fear of being impeded, to expose all their vices and convictions for the shadow which haunted the daylight.

He wanted out of Gotham badly. Working for Wayne's interests abroad had come as vast relief – well, working anywhere after what had happened was a relief,_ breathing_ was a relief. But abroad he ran much less risk of having the man himself sitting at his elbow with a bagel shoved in his mouth and a puppyish expression of hopeful incomprehension on his face, the effect of which was a profoundly sinister grating on Coleman's nerves. He was quite certain his employer was needling him deliberately, but the lack of tells and the way that Wayne and Fox never even exchanged a glance as they played the room had him wondering if this was something more serious, if he'd been called back for something more than joining in with and reporting to the board. There were always conference calls, after all.

1

_eight days earlier :_

The rhythms of it were dizzying – slow, slow, slow days and the long slog through them offset by this; now; Batman ducked and a bullet exploded against the brick wall in a cloud of red dust. Little fragments scattered everywhere, sharp edged and harmless.

One of the thugs slugged the vigilante in the mouth, steel rim of knuckleduster bursting his lip and the exposed curve of his cheek like the crushing of ripened fruit, red juice splashing down over his tongue and stinging it. The thug's co-worker had his arms looped in a loose bear hug around the Batman's torso, attempting to pin him, and the lucky juxtaposition of both acts had given them their moment. Speed was the signature of the nights, though, and he broke through the hold easily; tossed one assailant into the chest of another and kicked the legs of both out from under them. Their third man shot twice into the space he had once occupied, but now the monster was behind him, twisting his wrist until it snapped and the gun bounced off the ground, hitting him in the stomach until he dropped to his knees and emptied it.

Delicately, the Bat curled his talons around the man's throat, snagging some of his collar, and then he half lifted, half threw him into the wall.

"Who are you working for?"

There was blood on the vigilante's teeth, spluttering down his chin as he snarled. It was not at all humanising. His catch cringed away. The hand tightened around his jowls and the voice grew thunderous -

"Who are you working for?"

1

_seven days earlier:_

Lucius watched Coleman Reese without looking at him, his benevolent gaze traversing from face to face as the discussion went on around them. As the meeting dwindled into a pre-lunch-break torpor their attempted blackmailer grew more and more pale, and started to fiddle with his pen.

Bruce hopped up eagerly as soon as they closed and Lucius allowed his eyes to rest briefly on his friend's face; the dark smudging; the band aid which angled from lip to cheek and which had been excused by an oblique reference to angry girlfriends (and much meaningful eyebrow movement); the malicious innocence with which he invited Reese to go over the details of the meeting again for him, "just in case I missed a nuance or two," – winning smile. Their poor victim positively swallowed his own adam's apple, and possibly the arm thrown around his shoulders was a little much, but Lucius understood that Bruce had to take his pleasures where he could.

"Are you coming, Mr Fox?" asked Robert Westridge, who was there to negotiate with Wayne Enterprises but was also on friendly terms with most of the board. Lucius straightened his files and stood, letting the other man fall in beside him as they headed towards the cafeteria.

"Is Mr Reese alright?" Westridge asked. "He seems nervous about something."

"Coleman isn't really comfortable in Gotham after what happened," Lucius said. The back of that unfortunate's head bobbed anxiously as he hurried to keep up with Bruce's longer strides.

"It was brave of him, to act as bait like that," said Westridge musingly. "You wouldn't think it, either... well, I suppose you don't get the measure of a man in a business room."

"That depends on the man," he answered. Bruce was gesturing and Reese was staring sideways up at him, trying to shake his head but only achieving emphatic little jolts which kept time with his hopskipping walk. He couldn't make out what they were saying, but then he didn't need to.

"Think I should go rescue him from Wayne? The conversation of the migrant playboy is not for everyone."

Lucius laughed.

"I believe Mr Wayne is just inviting him to the fundraiser next week. He mentioned himself that Coleman was looking...tense, and thought it might help."

"Good God, there's another one on?"

"It's a charitable event, Robert," Lucius said, amused. "You're supposed to be attending yourself."

"Apparently the poverty in this city is just a conveniently placed backdrop for the partying," the other man grumbled. "Oh all right. I daresay I can sideline some vitally important project and get the evening off. What's the pretext? Selina - my secretary - probably mentioned it, but I almost never pay any attention to the poor girl. She's a saint for sticking around."

"Renovation in the Narrows," Lucius told him. He nodded in understanding, looked troubled for a second, then shrugged it off.

"Thank you, Mr Wayne," Reese said, audible now. "I really - just – Thank you."

1

_eight days earlier:_

"Here." Alfred took his charge's chin in one hand and dabbed lightly at the dried blood, fingers tightening slightly when Bruce tried to shake his head.

"It's fine. Shallow cut."

"Since that is your description of every injury not immediately life threatening, sir - " He angled Bruce's face so that he could follow the puckered line. The sting of disinfectant should have produced a wince, or at least some soft noise of pain, but apparently the boy considered grimacing the most obstructive option and was going to stick to it.

"Did you get any information?" he asked when he was done.

"Yes. A little." Bruce started to swivel round to his bank of computers. Alfred caught the back of his chair as it passed and added helpfully to its momentum, and Bruce slowly revolved around to face him again, looking bemused. The butler pressed a band aid over the cut, frowning as he might over the arrangement of uncooperative floral decorations.

"Which was?"

"That for the last attack, a stray group of unconnected thugs were hired anonymously to do what had previously been done by a semi professional, organised force. Gordon has them now."

Sigh. A brief agitated gesture which he quashed almost soon as it materialised.

"It's not exactly a dead end." He was vocalising now just for the sake of it, not really expecting any outside input. "The pattern has changed, that's suggestive. It also coincides more or less directly with what appears to be more recruitment from our unknown crime boss, if my analysis of street activity is accurate. Killer Croc may be involved somehow in management there. Surprising. It looks as though..."

He stopped, realised Alfred was no longer attending to his face, and span the chair to the computers.

"I'm going to carry on here," he said shortly, pinning the icepack his butler had brought him between jaw and shoulder and squinting sideways at the screens. Alfred was used to being a sounding board for incomplete and scrambled theories and the only frustration he felt at the terminated thought was his reaction against a sense of impending trouble, and concern over Bruce's ability to come through it intact.

"Very good, sir," he said.

1

_(twenty years previously:_

"It's been coming on for a while," one of the others said – she couldn't make out which of the others because one of her shoe laces had come undone and she was looking at that.

"I thought – maybe with a change of timeslot..."

"Well, that's it then." The lace had come undone a while ago, and her neglect had meant that now it was unpleasantly grubby and starting to unravel at the tip. She bent over and started looping a bow.

"You okay, Dahl?"

"I'm fine." She ran the pad of her index finger over the knot and then straightened up. Someone had spilled something on the wall. It looked to her like coffee.

"Well, that's it then. They could have given us more notice. We'll probably have to end on a cliffhanger."

"Yes."

It was relief. Adding bite to their saddened voices. Confusing her sense of everything. It was relief.)

1

_ten minutes earlier:_

To the old hands in the police force, the freakish turn crime had taken up was verging on offensive; a carnivalesque shift from the mundane politics of despair into something irreverent, something hard to catch hold of.

Batman upheld that principle in his own grim way, dodging and weaving between shadows and bullets, and the order "Take him alive, take him alive" crumbled in his wake as they failed to take him at all.

Burton could taste hate in the back of his mouth. It was curdled in adrenaline and blocked each gasping breath. The gun was shaking in his hands. He couldn't see the bastard.

He turned into an alley he thought Batman might have melted into, looking around and, since he'd watched plenty of movies, up – nowhere. Nothing. The creature who had murdered cops, murdered Dent, stolen away Gordon's family to threaten and traumatise – beautiful Barbara Gordon, Jim's wife, with her flickering Titian hair and her cool eyes, almost dead, sobbing over _his_ children – Batman had got away. Burton took one hand away from his gun to wipe the sweat off on his pants.

It struck then, of course, wrenching the gun away from him and it wasn't hate now that he could taste. Fear played a swift arpeggio on his spine.

He pulled the second gun out of its holster as someone entered the alley from the other end, shouted, shone a light. The brightness encasing them both seemed like treacle. He had to drag his arm up through it.

"It's the Bat and some cop!"

Shots. It took him a moment to realise it wasn't his own gun that was the source of the sound, and then Batman was grabbing for him, dragging him backwards into the dark, the huge armoured bulk blocking any available sightlines. It was snarling something unidentifiable and pushing at his arms and head. Burton stumbled backwards, forgetting the clatter of his weapon several paces behind them, only sparring for air as he warded off his attacker with just his open hands, helpless, pitiful.

The thunder of guns. Batman threw him around the corner and he fell backwards into a conglomeration of puddles. He felt like melting into one himself when he looked up to see that the vigilante had gone -such relief - but the sounds persisted – some kind of gang -

He got up and ran.

1

_now:_

"Fuck." She didn't mean to say the word, to admit to it, but once it was out she realised she didn't care. Seeming untouchable was superfluous - the thing was to remain uncatchable_. _And it stung.

She couldn't see his face. Probably not much sympathy to worry about from that camp. Nonetheless, he didn't sound accusing when he said,

"You led them on to us."

"Not deliberately." The honest truth for once. "Doesn't it make you feel better to know I can do the Robin Hood shtick, too?" She kicked one of the men in illustration. "Taking from the undeserving to give to the...well, I'm working on it."

He said nothing for a few seconds. The facelessness would bother her if she let it, never mind that she was mirroring the same thing back at him.

"Police are here already," he said. She pressed her hand onto the slice in her arm and sighed a little. It was starting to ache quite badly. And...that had been a warning, hadn't it? Somewhat redundant, but a warning nonetheless.

She didn't know what to do with the implications of that, if there were any, so she put them aside.

"Maybe you should try and retrieve their belongings for them," she said, heading up. "They're citizens in distress, after all."

"Can't hear them complaining," he growled, and conducted a fairly graceful evaporation into nothing.

"Fuck," she said again, three rooftops down, when she was sure he wouldn't hear.

_now:_

He heard her snarl when the shot skimmed her arm, but was otherwise occupied for a few minutes more and, after all, the sounds continued - mostly screaming from the men on the receiving end of her extremities. When he was done he looked up to see her pressing the pads of her clawed fingers into the tear in her suit as it dribbled blood.

One of her feet was resting lightly on an attacker's face. He might have smiled, except that her blood had splashed down in an arc over the man's cheek and hair and was sliding about on the rain slicked ground.

"Fuck," she murmured deep in her throat, dry annoyance more than pain. The police officer had fled, and probably summoned backup. He needed to leave now.

Now.

"You led them on to us."

She was an able fighter, but according to his notes preferred to avoid direct combat whenever sneakiness was an available play. Possibly she hadn't been shot very often. It wasn't something someone got accustomed to, exactly. She might need to go to a hospital with the injury.

"Not deliberately." She sounded tired, which was an irrelevant detail. Something about Robin Hooding which didn't in fact make him feel better. They had to leave now.

He was missing something.

"The police are here already," he told her. Trying to make sure she didn't get caught wasn't part of their deal but she must know already. She pressed her arm again and made a resigned noise. Perhaps she had been shot before.

"Shouldn't you try and retrieve their belongings for them? They're citizens in distress, after all."

She used the thug's face as a stepping stone, pivoting elegantly to the wall and digging her claws in. Climbing wouldn't help the injury. He had no idea what she could have taken or whether she still had it on her – the cat suit was absolutely skin tight and he hadn't identified its hiding places. Bruce Wayne might have speculated, Batman wasn't going to unless faced with no other option.

Still missing something, but he could consider it later.

"I can't hear them complaining," he said, and ducked back into the darkest point in the alley until her attention had moved on, then left.

1

_one day later:_

"Why are we going to this again?" Robert Westridge asked as he fumbled his bow tie into place and took his secretary's arm.

"For sport," Ms Kyle said, patting his shoulder cheerfully. He chuckled under his breath and the two of them entered the crowded hall, to very little fanfare.

"Perhaps we should dance," he suggested eventually, unenthusiastic even after ten minutes of standing by the wall pretending to drink the champagne.

"Stop worrying, Mr Westridge." She'd been thinking elsewhere.

"Well, I made you come. I should at least entertain – oh, here's Wayne."

The man in question was sauntering in with seven attractive young women at his heels. It was a relatively peaceful entrance by his standards, possibly engineered as such so he could jump straight into telling everyone that they were [significant pause] _acrobats_.

He'd planned to keep to their own small and resolutely boring corner for the duration, or at least find some sensible people to talk to – Leslie Thomkins, for instance, or Fredericks or Fox – but all of a sudden Selina was tugging on his arm and, well, noblesse oblige. He had dragged her out here, after all, and he was pretty sure she'd prefer to avoid the airheaded affluent wherever possible. Except now they were heading straight for some prime examples. Inexplicable.

They were congregating around Coleman Reese, who seemed uncomfortable with the onset of celebrity. He turned pink when one of Wayne's acrobats leaned in and touched his arm, told him he was brave, smiled. Selina slipped quietly into the crowd while they were still smirking at this. Giles, the benevolent idiot, poked Reese in the ribs, and then attempted a relevant remark.

"It's too bad you didn't really have the information to expose Batman," he said. "Think of all the trouble we would have avoided since."

"Well, he- well, he did catch the Joker," Reese faltered. "Even if..."

"Come on, Coleman. The police would have got him eventually," Wayne said, loudly jovial as he slapped him on the shoulder.

"I suppose so," Reese said uncomfortably, glancing sideways at Wayne's arm.

They stood there for some time, playing at social awareness while Westridge kept his tongue between his teeth. Well, most of them played at it: Wayne talked a lot about cars. Also something about saving the day by trying to catch a light, which he seemed to regard as proof of being born untouchable.

"So you're something of a hero yourself, Mr Wayne," Selina said, impressively without satirical inflection. He preened.

"In, uh...certain respects, sure, I'm pretty heroic, Ms Kyle. Leading man material, you know."

"I'd watch out if I were you, then, Wayne," Westridge said, in lieu of punching him. "Heroes haven't had a particularly good showing in this town."

That was more malicious than he'd meant it to be, he realised- considering the names of two of those heroes. The playboy just shrugged and smiled.

"I've lived this long," he said carelessly. "Besides, I've got Coleman here, so I'm sure I'll be fine."

Selina cut off the conversation then by suddenly drawing back her arm to brush a strand of hair out of her face and revealing as she did so a heavy bandage under her sleeve.

"How did that happen?" he asked anxiously. She laughed at him.

"I burned it on the oven. It's fine. It doesn't hurt."

"Are you sure? It's a pretty clunky looking bandage."

"It's fine."

"Not engaging in any heroics yourself, Ms Kyle?" Wayne asked. For some reason he sounded rather strained for a moment.

"No, only dabbling in bakery," she answered coolly, "I'm afraid it's beyond me." Probably true, Westridge thought. She wasn't the most domestic of women, Selina.

"No doubt you make up for it in other ways." The acrobats were starting to look put out, but Wayne thankfully let it drop there and it wasn't that long before his secretary was requesting leave via eye contact. Noblesse oblige to the rescue.

She was quiet as he gave her a lift back to her house. Probably tired. Most non-trust fund brigade members weren't used to being up at this kind of hour.


	10. Slipshod

Disclaimer: yeah yeah, whatever

Notes and warning: FOR THOSE NOT NEWLY DISCOVERING THE WONDERS OF THIS FIC - the bit at the start in brackets is a paraphrase of what was previously the end of the previous chapter, you can skip it. I have finally reuploaded all the chapters in their edited form, although the process never stops, hurrah - but nothing plotwise has changed, so you don't have to go back and reread anything. Last chapter's cliffie is basically gone, alas - however there is a better one here, so yay. EXPERIENCE TORMENT. Have fun.

1

Before:

(Selina liked mingling with rich people, especially the drunk and loose lipped variety, although the quality of conversation she was exposed to did tend to suffer for the preference. Still, there were always points of interest, many of them pleasantly shiny.

Coleman Reese was interesting. The ferrety little man squirmed under every question about his role in the Joker crisis, and his whole story reeked of cover up. She lurked by him and waited for someone to ask the right thing.

Most of the company that night circulated, but Wayne stayed there with Reese and so Selina was obliged to suffer his company in order to have any chance of extracting information. There was something _off_ about the playboy, something that got under her skin and niggled, and she responded with a dislike which was at a higher ratio to contempt that was normal for her. It didn't matter. He wasn't the one she was after tonight. Fortunately, since the only interesting thing anyone knew about Reese was his out of character exploit, she didn't have to do much of the probing herself. Unfortunately, Wayne's random crash into the issue meant that he kept derailing the discussion onto himself and his very expensive cars.

"So you're something of a hero yourself, Mr Wayne," she interrupted at last, on the assumption that if he got the validation he was clearly aiming for he might stop talking for a few minutes, and also on the off chance that he would take particular notice of someone who failed to react in the way he was expecting. He responded satisfactorily.

"In, uh...certain ways, sure, I'm pretty heroic, Ms Kyle. Leading man material, you know." Now the wink. She smiled admiringly but without excessive interest.

He remembered her name. She had slipped up somewhere, so be harmless, be demure – be boring. Remind him he has significant pause acrobats.

"I'd watch out if I were you, then, Wayne," Robert jumped in. "Heroes haven't had a particularly good showing in this town."

The playboy shrugged, as if to ask _What could touch me?_

The wrongness of his reactions persisted, but she was distracted by the sudden change in Reese's expression. Apparently this trend was news to him, which was fair enough, she supposed: he was alive.

"I've lived this long," Wayne said carelessly. "Besides, I've got Coleman here, so I'm sure I'll be fine."

"Yes," said Reese, oddly emphatic and less ferretlike than usual. She didn't have time to analyse, though, because as she drew her arm back to brush her hair out of her eyes the sleeve of her dress folded up, exposing the bandage she'd wrapped around last night's injury. Robert, the benighted man, was immediately all solicitousness.

"How did that happen?" he asked anxiously. She laughed at him.

And...

"Not engaging in any heroics yourself, Ms Kyle?" Wayne asked. It should have been teasing, but there was a quality of flatness to the question which made her look up at him sharply, catching herself on the cheerful guilelessness of his smile.

"No, only dabbling in bakery," she said, managing to keep her own voice empty of any kind of query. This man got on her nerves, perhaps more than any of the other socialites she had met. "I'm afraid it's beyond me."

"No doubt you make up for it in other ways," - and just like that, the flatness was gone; replaced by even less desirable inflections. She was not going to dismiss it out of hand, but the out of place inscrutability of his moods contributed more to annoyance than deep suspicion.

She remained quiet in the background, still waiting, until Reese suddenly announced the onset of a headache and Wayne, who apparently believed that some of the general respect for what the other man had done might rub off well on him if they stayed together, offered to ferry him home. At this she glanced significantly over at Robert, who picked up on his cues admirably.

She was grateful for the silence as he drove her back. She didn't like to be interrupted when she was planning a robbery.

Bruce Wayne was not going to know what hit him.)

1

It was raining again. Bright skies in Gotham were as rare as is its surviving heroes. The city was slicked with water and the liquid glow of streetlamps, light winding through the coils of darkness and seeding itself strategically into bedroom windows and the fronts of clubs; never quite enough to guard against the monsters lurking in less admissive places.

Nonetheless, Selina felt an odd pulse of affection intrude into the pentagram of her preparatory focus. Her hands, previously flipping with businesslike haste through her gear, now lingered slightly on each piece, examining the components of her reconstructed life. Her answer to the city.

The half-introspection lasted only a few seconds before resolving itself and turning back to planning: clockwork and blueprints and precision. But still, as she stepped out into the night, she was not entirely displeased by the light and the rain, which together polished her costume and made her delicate operation somewhat more slippery.

Bruce Wayne's penthouse was an impressive structure even placed so solidly among its fellows; huge and off the curve of fragile with its multitude of windows; lit up like a Christmas tree. It was late enough at night for all the probable partygoers to have gone home, and Catwoman slunk up, shadowy debutant, to take over.

The security systems were surprisingly well selected. Wayne must have found someone with considerable expertise to co-ordinate and install them - even with the preparation she'd done, the mechanics of overcoming his precautions took time and she would have to remain more than usually cautious inside.

She hadn't fallen on this side of anticipation for a long time. Not since she'd decided to stylise herself more than was businesslike: not since she'd first gone out on the town to dance with those lurking monsters.

1

She didn't get caught, or seen, or talent spotted by the papers – however best to define that process of achieving a higher tier of symbolism which Gotham was pioneering – until her third outing. Gordon's new protégée Renee Montoya, living up to her commission, saw the silhouette which was ghosting back into intangibility; chased her half a block and almost ran out into traffic in the heat of pursuit. That furious look, stranded on a curb, and Catwoman knew she was on to something.

The next two times, no-one saw, but the word was out.

The Mayor made statements. James Gordon made statements. Probably no one believed the statements of either. She wasn't quite the talk of the town, not in the wake of everything else, but the town recognised her by her moniker and it wasn't a bad sign to stand by, nine lives and all.

She'd been expecting the Bat for some time when he finally showed. She was wary, because of Dent, because every dead criminal these days was attributed to the self constructed monster facing her, but not alarmed – because she was fast, because she was clever, and because curiosity weighed more with her than fear did.

"Hello there, handsome," she purred, aiming for contrast. The menacing posture didn't deflate, maybe because she'd been too traditionalist in her opening line, but somehow she caught a taste of answering curiosity in his silent regard.

He hit back when she hit him. When she peeled away her costume later that night the bruise was already forming, and her claws had blood on the tips – not much, but enough. They resided on the knife edge of anticipation.

(There's a kind of romance to it, this perusal of the night.)

1

She crept into the first room and looked around for valuables. Someone like Wayne kept most of his money locked up in big things –vehicles, buildings, paid off authorities, tropical islands – but there were always trinkets to complement the trappings of power, and someone like her, for whom theft was lifestyle as much as income, could afford to be selective. Could peruse, in fact.

She inspected a painting briefly, head cocked to one side, then decided she didn't care for his taste. Move on. A ridiculously tricked out, brand new model of phone was lying on the seat of a chair– she shrugged and collected it. Next.

There was a small folder on top of the desk in the corner. She flipped it open and wrinkled her nose in disgust at the discovery of page after page of newspaper clippings, each featuring the broad, empty smile of the owner of the house. The leaves of scurrilous headlines fluttered as she slid the folder shut.

There weren't many other photographs. Everything was very thoroughly dusted.

Next.

She began to feel cold as she looked from place to place, collecting impersonal items as she went. As though she was inspecting a sculpture of huge, hugely empty rooms. Every modern, minimalist line was a stylishly hollow exhibit. She didn't know if he would even notice she had been there.

Usually that would be a good thing. But she wanted it to hurt.

1

When their benefactor made his first appearance Selina sat on the steps picking at a strip of moss and watched Mrs Grange greet him - wave her hands around with inexplicable eagerness - usher him inside. She was unimpressed enough to eavesdrop.

They held their meeting for some reason in one of the smallest rooms in the orphanage; the one with bottle green ferns placed on the windowsill and faded brown paint on the opposite wall, which the occasional penetration of sunlight had bleached. There was a big desk in that room, using up even more of the space, and its drawers were full of lilac packs, the sort supposed to keep fabric smelling nice. When you pulled one open in search of the untold secrets of the institution - perhaps a map to buried treasure – you got a face full of stiflingly state, lilac scented air. It didn't seem very economical.

The man was huge. The top of his head was bald, with thin skin stretched over the skull, but at about the area of his eyebrows the flesh started to puff out, became expansive, so that his sagging jowls smoothed themselves into his shoulders and his arms were pushed apart by the huge stretch of chest and stomach. At the waist there seemed to be some attempt at a remedy, but his belt was clearly struggling with it. There were heavy rings on his fingers that had the same trouble.

At the time, the nine year old read it as a grossly effective demonstration of the excesses of capitalism. Later, she considered the possibility of some genetic problems. Mrs Grange seemed to have no objection, at least, as the man talked about funds – a new playground, perhaps, fresh paint on the walls (_more lilac packs_?) – and schedules. In return, the head of the orphanage waxed grateful – thanked him most for coming in person (_ taking up space_).

She resented him. He made the orphanage look smaller than it was.

A year later, their sponsor was arrested on suspicion of embezzlement and other charges that, as an adult, she has forgotten. He was generous, she remembers thinking then, charity materialising only after the criminal element was confirmed. The smell of paint was still hanging in all the rooms.

1

The lights in the bedroom were on but she could see from a distance that the billionaire was stretched out on his back on the bed, fully clothed. He wasn't quite snoring, but the sound was sonorous and somehow discomforted, as though his lungs were uncertain of what to do with all the allowance they were being given. Possibly he was coming down with something. More probably he was drunk.

His room was as sparse as all the others, with just the faint presence of its inanimate occupant to suggest that it was in fact in use. She would have predicted a degree of messiness from this quarter, if only discarded clothes or spare floosies, but it was immaculate, and as empty of worthwhile items for filching as it was of signs of life.

Rain drummed on the glass outside and Catwoman's expression of puzzled discontent loosened. The excursion had not lived up to expectations, true. But the view from out the window was magnificent.

Gotham. What had been shadowplay at ground level was fire and the deluge from above, the broken masts and heavy shells of ships emerging out of the river to function as buildings, volcanic and sub aquatic structures channelling the articles of heaven and hell and forcing them into a shattering embrace. The city roiled outside, available from all angles.

She didn't know how someone who slept here every night - with this - could forget.

She didn't know how anyone could sleep here.

Selina walked over to the bed and looked down at its resident billionaire critically. Without that diversion of a smile the effects of his notorious lifestyle were more apparent on his face: he looked gaunt and anaemic, dark circles ringing his eyes which were a match for the ones she displayed herself after several nights work. He was less objectionable unconscious, but she disarmed the coil of pity which tried to tangle itself in with every other impression. Invalid. Most people appear more virtuous asleep.

The interior lights repulsed the city's confused blaze and held it back from him, maintaining the bleached out remainder of the spectrum, but her approach had dropped a shadow over his face. A tiny crease appeared between his brows as she leant in.

Her mouth was moments from his. He'd know that she had been there. He would know that she could take – had taken, might again – from what belonged to him.

She wanted it to hurt.

He mumbled something which sounded like _Rachel._

She kissed him, because her mask had all the markings of the femme fatal; because he seemed to be the kind of man who would find it threatening; because she wanted to be close enough to bite.

She could have cracked the whip to wake him, but this seemed more thematically appropriate.

For a moment he remained still, docile under her weight, a fluttering disturbance of his lashes the only indication that he was stirring into wakefulness. His eyes hadn't focused yet when his hand suddenly slammed into her shoulder, he pushed and twisted against her and their positions abruptly inverted. His fingers were wrapped around her throat, her claws tensed against his; her pinned quickly enough to be entirely disoriented, him still more profoundly engaged with dreams than waking life's moments of drama.

Those were some reflexes.

They stared at each other. The sharp tip of her thumb was whitening the skin just under the hook of his jaw, but after a moment it shifted. She traced the line thoughtfully. He was wearing a short sleeved shirt which exposed the taunt muscles in his arms and the delicate lettering of scars inscribed over them, and she was pretty sure she knew what they must spell out. His fingers were calloused and she could provide rueful testament as to their strength.

Her lips began to curl into a grin of surmise, delight heightened by his seeming bewilderment and by her own combination of genuine surprise and solution, as of pieces clicking together to make an inevitable but unexpected pattern.

_Gotcha._

"Good morning, Batman," she murmured. His lack of response confirmed her suspicion that he didn't realise he was awake, which was...interesting.

Also interesting was the way this perception was apparently licence enough for him to suddenly lean in and kiss her again, his hand relaxing from her throat and moving up to cradle her cheek, fingers brushing at the edges of the mask. Self indulgent, she let her own hands migrate in explorative circles for a while, comparing the reality of the thing to the suggestions made by the suit.

He tasted of strawberries, which had certainly never been indicated by their previous interactions. She'd kissed him once, previously - as a distraction, but he'd been pulling away at the time and then it had been mint. Anyway, slightly flustered aggravation was not an _unsatisfactory_ result, but this was...also fun. And she knew she had him.

Too much so, in fact, because that was when he murmured her name.

All investigations ceased. Almost involuntarily, she slammed her palms against his chest, pushing him off her into a startled exclamation and then a thump as he fell from the bed entirely. She tried to wipe the horror out of her expression, in order to face him with the laughing advantage of composure as well as altitude, but it was impossible. Of course he knew. Of course he knew. The bandage, it must have been, along with all the other clues – _of course he knew._

It was still just a game.

She scrambled to her feet, taking some comfort in the speechless dismay spreading over his now fully conscious face as he realised what had just happened. His utterly disordered appearance compared to her still present suit helped too.

Therefore, while her purr was perhaps not quite as steady as it might have been when she asked "Do I show up often in your dream life, Mr Wayne?" – it was a pretty good showing. He hadn't managed to shut down the feed to his own indicators yet, although the attempt at resuming a poker face was still fairly impressive in the circumstances.

He swallowed and said nothing. The contrast between this and the face he used in public was – like night and day. Some of her surprise seeped belatedly back in, mixing with grudging approval – he was better at the game that she'd expected him to be. And he knew who she was – hadn't turned her in. But then Batman had always shown that he knew how to keep his mouth shut.

Well, on most occasions, anyway.

She stood there, poised for flight, watching him watch her.

"So what now?" she asked finally. A muscle in his jaw twitched, but he said nothing.

"Maybe you need some more time to think," she said, easing herself backwards.

And fled.

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AN: ...

Yay?

And to anyone who also reads Bridges of Moonshine - at least she didn't take his plushie this time.

Note that this chapter has not been obsessively edited; we're back to the raw version here. I wrote the most important bits as a combination of sleep deprived and hyper, as every writer should. However, if I put in all the wrong words again, or spelt 'Catwoman' as Kazoo at any point, or wandered off into a discourse on Bolivian insects midway through the chapter, please do tell me.


	11. Terminus

AN: Sorry it's so short, I'm busy with coursework at the moment.

1

It was almost a month later when she saw him again, mask recompiled, composure recovered; in every particular as he had been before their little session of bridge burning.

That rankled a little, if she was honest, but after all they were creatures of habit.

"Catwoman."

At least he had the decency to keep a proper distance.

"Congratulations, Bruce." She didn't care much if she hurt him; didn't care about all those corrosive secrets. "You and Gordon must be pleased. The streets are safe once again."

"They're never safe," – so said the giant bat to the clawed cat burglar, many stories above the ground.

She shrugged that off too. "You've been avoiding me."

"I thought we had a deal," he said. The voice had diminished back into personhood, which was something.

"I suppose. I'd ask if you usually kissed girls and then never called them, but your reputation precedes you."

"Catwoman..." He was shuffling his boots like an awkward teenager, on the verge of some further confession – as if she needed more at this point.

"It won't ever work," he said, quickly, as though unable to credit the sudden shift in genre his life had taken.

"Why? Because you're a hero and I'm a thief? Because our collective trust issues could destabilise the fabric of reality? Because love stories don't exist in Gotham? I don't care. Damn it, Bruce, I want you."

"You're too late," the Bat rasped wanly. "I'm seeing The Penguin now. I'm a sucker for a man in a monocle."

With that he swept off into the night, correctly judging that there was nothing more to say.

Selina clenched her fists and reviewed her options. Alright. She could deal with this. There was a desirable irony in the burning down of an establishment called the Iceberg Lounge. Then she could go and find out if Commissioner Gordon had finalised his divorce yet...

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FIN


	12. Frisson

Disclaim'd.

Notes: Obviously, last chapter was a April Fools joke, so this picks up from the previous one.

Warning: One example of strong language.

_1_

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_The way it was, was – none of the usual suspects were responsible for the current level of mob activity. Harvey and Gordon together had broken the back of the established group: as much as the crime families of Gotham aped the Hydra, the remaining heads were not by any means the obvious or natural leaders. For the last few months they had been fighting amongst themselves in a thoroughly satisfactory way, eliminating a good portion of their remaining mediocrities. It had made monitoring members easy. _

Five hours later, his hands were just starting to shake – with anger, with fear, with some unidentifiable implosion of emotion that he didn't have time to deal with, and so dealt – and Alfred found him like that: sitting on the floor with his work laptop, which he never used for real work, buzzing full of suspects and police data and spurious connections. Files spun out in a web around him, spilling paper and documented villainy.

None of them were capable of hiding the sort of activities which were undoubtedly going on and were undoubtedly being implemented, at least in their early stages, by their thugs and hitmen. None of their money appeared to be moving significantly, and there was clearly significant money being used somewhere. None of them, moreover, had any kind of sway with Killer Croc.

The old man came in carrying a breakfast tray and stopped in his tracks, and Bruce couldn't keep himself from looking up to scan his face, seeing it embarrassingly blank. He fought the absurd inclination to say 'This isn't what it looks like'.

_Croc was a loner – occasionally worked for hire, but never stuck around with one employer for long no matter how much money there was for the taking. The use of him as a recruiter was odd and counter intuitive, and his other activities seemed to imply a management position, which was even more so. They had something else on him. He'd done some research into that angle, wondering about cures for Croc's condition, personal connections – turned up nothing. _

Instead he took the tray and smiled. "Thank you, Alfred."

Alfred stared at him. "...Master Wayne. What are you doing?"

"You are always complaining that I spend too much time in the cave," he said lightly. "I just decided to combine our priorities."

The old man reassumed his standard impassivity by breaking eye contact and looking out across the room again, taking in the haze of detection on the carpet, and then dropping his attention to his ward's hands.

"What has happened?"

Bruce didn't really know; it had happened too fast. He found himself backing away until the edge of the bed hit the back of his knees, then folding down into a compact shape with its face hidden by its trembling fingers.

"I almost have it," he said through them.

_He had leads, though._

_His leads, as follows: _

_Someone or someones with considerable resources and the ability to utilise them with startling effectiveness. Possibility if not likelihood of successful criminal history pulled off without coming to prominence._

_Some kind of personal connection to the murdered actors. Started out with the signatures of mob men, then on the last case went with desperate, scraped off the street amateurs, coinciding with a change of age and gender in victim. Could be a copy cat, in which case not a very precise copy; could be unrelated but that fits oddly with the time frame. The boy was an actor from a family of actors and his mother fits the original profile well. In my opinion an attempt to obfuscate; to change a pattern which resists being changed. Suggests a degree of obsession. _

_The thugs who were chasing Catwoman. _

_Damnitdamnitdamnit. _

He lifted his head.

1

This time they had opted for modernity: dispersing a recent pop music hit through the speakers in the foyer, loud enough for the beat to be audible further inside, though not the melody. He stuck his hands in his pockets and sauntered into the museum – casual visitor; not raw, not ragged, not operating on impulse for the first time since it killed Rachel. Not chasing.

She was sitting on one of the benches, facing away from him and apparently absorbed in thought, or perhaps wholly invested in the various quirks of the sixteenth century. He recognised the cut of her hair and the line of her jaw with a frisson of aggravated uncertainty, but proceeded towards her anyway. She turned around before he closed the distance even halfway and spun a variant on the grin she always produced after a spectacular escape or a particularly close call. He kept his stride even as hindsight collected all the pieces and sighed over them: the eyes; the tilt of the head; these things should have made it obvious from the beginning. He dropped onto the bench beside her and met her evaluation in his peripheral vision.

"Interesting move," she said, facing forward again and watching him out of the corner of her eye. He clasped his hands loosely between his knees and studied the frayed cuffs of his disguise, hanging over hands which were steady now.

"I suppose so," he said. Tinny music persisted, tracking a long way through over-air-conditioned spaces to scoop the substance out of his voice, making it sound hoarse and unfamiliar in its context. Selina kicked her legs out in front of her and lounged back, exposing the slither of skin between the waistband of her jeans and the hem of her shirt to the chill in the museum. Her utter nonchalance kicked against his chest a feeling which might have been the recoil of amusement if he had belonged to some other life, one which gave its tenants more licence in interior decorating. As it was he watched her blankly, waiting for openings to manifest. But she was Catwoman.

"My turn then, I suppose." She imitated his tone on the last word and he was surprised at how listless her mouth made it. "You're in luck, as it happens. I'll be prepared to listen to your offer. The cameras here aren't good enough to pick up on our negotiations, so we may as well do it now."

"My offer," he said slowly.

"Of course. You must be aware of the weakness of your position," she said, green eyes widening with mock astonishment. Somewhat to his alarm, he felt the corners of his mouth twitch in answer.

"I'm not famed for my business-head, I'm afraid, Miss Kyle," he said, securely Brucie now. "If you could be a little more clear..."

"It's fairly simple," she said. "You are here, after all. If you were content with the situation as it stood then you wouldn't be."

"As a matter of fact I came seeking personal improvement," he replied blandly. "The displays here are very informative."

She snorted and again he only just defused the threat of a smile. He shouldn't smile. Playing this persona too hard when she clearly saw through it might suggest desperation.

"Since I have no problem with you continuing as you have been, that places you in the role of supplicant," she concluded, with a flourish on 'supplicant' that would have twitched any other playboy to attention immediately. He shook his head.

Forward blasé negotiator.

"Not a bad spin, but that's all it is. We've already established that I'm busy elsewhere for the moment, but I can do more with your name than you can do with mine. "

"A question of influence?" she smirked. "You realise that gives you more to lose?"

"I imagine retaining freedom has roughly the same value to both of us." He shrugged.

"An impasse, then," she said, oddly satisfied. "Do you remember the one time you caught me properly?"

He didn't much care for that 'properly' there, but presumably she was building to a point.

"I had to get away from the police once you'd left – something of an anticlimax, by the way. Took about a minute to get clear."

"Yes?"

"You could have taken off my mask then. Considering my escape rate, you should have. What am I to infer from that little omission?"

"Perhaps that catching criminals occupies enough of my attention without wasting any on processing, which is something the police are more equipped to do anyway."

"Liar." The grin from earlier was back and the green in her eyes was glittering with a disturbing refraction of delight. It really was astonishing that he hadn't put things together as soon as he saw her without the costume. "I have to admit, that quality is a little unexpected."

He was slightly thrown by the change in direction. "It's fairly obligatory."

"Only because you're Bruce Wayne."

"Also fairly obligatory, although I've sampled other options."

"Ha." She tossed her head back, but continued to watch him with care from under her eyelids. He realised to his alarm that he was wearing a crooked smile which matched hers, and he couldn't tell which one of them it belonged to.

"And last night is similarly free of implications?"

He shrugged again, no longer smiling. "Playboy."

"Please." More people were starting to filter inside and he monitored their proximities absentmindedly, ducking his head so that no one could get a clear view of his face. She basked in the full measure of her anonymity with cheerfully obvious spite. "Relax. I'm not proposing that you confess your undying devotion." She placed a hand lightly on his knee and leant closer, dropping the softness of the voices they had been employing into a nearly inaudible whisper which somehow managed to stay taunting. "_If it makes you feel any better, I find you quite interesting too_."

The blasé negotiator repelled the memory of humiliation along with her hand and sat back, raising his eyebrows coldly. "Much obliged," he said.

"I noticed that before, too," she murmured. More hurried suppression. Later, later, later.

"If we could get back to the point," he directed, " I think we were agreeing that each of us is in a position to inconvenience the other."

"Seems accurate enough," she agreed.

"For now, we should probably keep co-operating."

"Is _that_ what you're calling it?"

"So in the spirit of co-operation, you help me set up a trap for the next set of assassins the mob sends after you, and I don't follow you around for a few weeks until I can catch them attacking you again."

"...I think there's a leap in there somewhere..."

Pleased to have caught the advantage, however fleeting his possession of it might be, he let his face settle back into its most pokerish cast.

"You hadn't lifted anything from the attackers you lead on to me a few weeks ago. They were hit men, mid level, the kind currently being recruited en mass to work for our new mob boss. You refused their offer and presumably they're now wiping out competition. Or attempting it, anyway."

She half bowed at the waist. "They have made life more exciting since we've had our truce."

He sighed. "Miss Kyle. I have to track these people down."

"And you will very gallantly risk my life to do it?"

He rubbed his face, the previous almost sleepless night starting to work in on him."It's a question of self preservation, isn't it? You need them gone as much as I do."

"That's true. A convenient in for you, since otherwise you'd have to rely on altruism." She cocked her head. "I don't like being used, Mr Wayne."

"I don't like being robbed," he said, knuckling at one eye. "Incidentally, do you have my phone on you?"

"Sorry, no."

"You wouldn't be willing to-"

"No."

1

In some affectingly mythical better, more wholesome time when men were men and women were elsewhere, mob bosses and politicians were to be found in smoke filled rooms, discussing the future of their nations.

Nobody in this room smoked, because of the health problems which came attached, and because it was expensive and because their wives disapproved. Most of them were more notorious in nightclubs than on the street, and their wives disapproved of that too, but it was middle age crisis crunch time and some degree of rebellion was obligatory.

Little Miss Baby Doll sat all absurdist in their midst; perched on a tiny chair like a tiny bird with her face so bright and rosy and immaculate in its recollection of innocence, and they trotted out their nefarious schemes for her approval. She chewed on one finger. Behind her – always, inevitably behind her, like the punch line - stood Killer Croc, his chin sunk on his chest so that the top of his skull only brushed against the ceiling, his bloodshot eyes roving everywhere. It was easy to imagine him straightening his spine and collapsing the room around him, with only the precious porcelain thing he guarded protected from the debris under the gargoyle jut of his jaw.

Al Maroni lurked in the back of the room, trying not to imagine, trying not to glower.

"And what about your vendetta?" someone asked -not belligerent so much as uninvolved in the subversion, coldly sceptical - but the voice had momentum, perhaps terminal velocity. "Isn't that dangerous for us?" He hardly had time to realise that it was his insubordinate tongue picking up speed before the china blue eyes turned to him, blinking palely. "Vendetta?"

He wasn't going to play the game. "You know what I'm talking about."

"It's all used up," she said, smiling around the finger she kept pressed to her lips, perpetually chewing. "These things are more important."

"You've said that before," he said. The chewing became more concentrated.

"I have? And I kept my word, didn't I, Mr Maroni?"

Everyone else around the room was staring straight ahead, pretending not to hear. None of them were good for anything.

"You had that boy killed," he said. "It was obvious."

A flash of chilled defiance swam through the calculated intervals of her eyes like a fish. Or a crocodile.

"I did not," she said.

"This is business," he told her. He was not being lulled into being paternal by her particular investment of freak credit, but he was as civil as he could make himself. He had a very large gun, but she had other advantages. "Not show biz."

"It's right there in the name," she answered pertly; cutesy .

"_Yeah_, it is." They couldn't afford spectacle of this sort, in much the same way as he almost certainly couldn't afford to be the one saying these things. Someone had to. "But we don't get ahead by looking good and smiling while making _fucking_ stupid, self indulgent mistakes that collar all the headlines!"

Killer Croc shifted restlessly. Al kept smiling until the urge to vomit went away. Baby Doll just sat there, staring at him without surprise or indignation, the wide furls of her eyelashes blankly suspended as she waited for any particular face to assert itself as appropriate.

"I'm sorry," he said into the certainty of Too Late. "I'm just concerned that we might get complacent in our success."

"Everybody please leave," she said in a clipped, professional voice. "Except Mr Maroni here. I'd like to discuss these things with him further."

Al's stomach wrung itself out like a wet rag. He hadn't said goodbye to his daughter this morning.

The little girl and her grotesquery of shadow moved down the room towards him. She beckoned for him to bend down. He dropped to his knees, as though now only exaggerated submission could absolve him, or as though they couldn't hold him up.

She placed a cold hand gently on his cheek, then tugged one ear down to her lips. Whispered something in a softly lisping voice. Patted his head when she was done. Then she let him run away.

Killer Croc watched him go with what might have been disapproval, and seemed to consider an insubordination of his own in following him out, head turned stiffly to listen to the pounding footfalls.

He turned back when he heard the harsh croak of her first sob.

1

Bruce's phone rang, cutting across the rather tense pause. He held up one hand to her and her knowing look and answered.

"Alfred? This is a bad time..." Liar, but –

"What? When? Alright. Right. I'm on my way." He ended the call and stared for a moment at the phone in his palm.

"Something important?" Selina murmured. He met her eyes.

"Two children have been kidnapped. Their father is the actor Oliver Spenser. Selina, I need your answer now."

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AN: I'm so sorry this is so late and hurried. I would blame it on exams – last one tomorrow! – but that would make me a lying liar who lies. I've just been distracted by other things, albeit profound, important, life changing things.

...

...New season of Doctor Who! :D

...I'm so sorry.


	13. Wait

"Tell me, why are so many of our loose ends still flapping in the wind?"

Croc was sprawled out on the carpet, his chin on his claws and a neat pair of reading glasses perched on his blunt nose, but when he lifted his head it was nearly level with hers. He didn't say anything, but the scales angled into reproof. In her head this look was reserved for her adult voice; Croc himself said he didn't have looks to match her acts, but she could always tell.

"Catwoman!" she snapped. "She's still at large, and she's making us _look_ bad."

He slowly closed the book.

"Take those off, they're farcical," she said. He removed the glasses and held them up, searching for the offending element.

"They're doing a special exhibit of something or other tonight; she'll probably go for that; they're on the watch for her; she relishes the challenge. Send better men this time. Send the best."

"Done," he said.

Suddenly calm, she put her head to one side and gave him a cherubic smile. "Sorry to rant at you, dear. You're so patient."

She steepled her fingers over her stomach and leant back in her chair, feet kicking freely. "It's just that it will be a morale boost when we catch her. She'd be reluctant to let the opening go. You know that in the end it's our masks which make us predictable."

Killer Croc went back to his book.

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Sarah Spenser inspected her bleeding fingers. The tears in her eyes stayed put as she raised her hands back to the crack of artificial light between the trap door and the floor, and resumed her scratching. Sometimes she pressed her mouth to the space instead and called out in a whisper: too frightened to scream for help, she mouthed anthems to hope and hoped that they might save her heart, if only for last. She was too young to know how to beg effectively for her life, though instinct had a few cues to hand off.

There was blood in her yellow hair and dripping from her brother's nose. He didn't answer when she shook him by the shoulders so she pulled him against her and went on scratching and calling, and the tears didn't come.

That, at least, was something.

1

"It must be convenient," Catwoman said softly to the microphone embedded in her mask. "Having museum curators hopping at your every whim."

She shifted into a slightly more conspicuous position, trying to restrain all the objecting instincts which wanted to chase her back to her training. Her partner maintained radio silence, which was predictable but not satisfactory. "I suppose that might answer for the autocratic sense of entitlement."

The silence continued undeterred, and the prospect of keeping this up all night if her assassins didn't manifest soon was a trying one, but then he appeared to relent.

"You wouldn't consider your attitude to other people's property an entitled one?" His voice was more in the Bruce Wayne vein than the Batman rasp, but there was a definite strand of roughness to it, as though discovery had confused his sense of being in character. That study would have to come later.

"The rules of ownership have always been foggy," she said, stamping a foot in illustration: "Half the exhibits inside where I'm standing now have been...removed impolitely from their original owners at some point or other." She could hear him breathing on the other end, light and regular as he listened. "Objects, like history, belong to whoever wins the contest for them. But even if that weren't the case – I steal things. I've never held a whole city to ransom."

The breathing faltered minutely, so she put the boot in. "I also don't lay claim to other people's moral steering."

"Is that what I do?" he was quiet again briefly, but this time it was a preparatory, thoughtful quiet. "I've never tried to reform you."

"No? You keep chasing me, dragging me into your affairs when according to your own rules I should be kicking my heels in jail."

She didn't mind the wait before the action, but the night was stuffy and somewhere there were high stakes trying to make themselves relevant to her performance. Batman was almost entirely gone from his tone as he reasoned. She missed it a little.

"Your own actions made you a viable asset. I didn't impose those on you. And If you really thought this was about me asserting my understanding of the status quo over you, you wouldn't be here. You're just bored and trying to pick a fight."

She looked out at the glittering skyline. Fire and the deluge. "So fight me."

"Alright. As you wish." Not resignation. "You take police time away from people who need help. While they're chasing you, they can't be solving murders and stopping rapists. You sacrifice other people in order to create the kind of freedom that derives from being unaccountable to anyone."

There are two children missing who have nothing to do with either of them. There are a hundred children missing who have nothing to do with anyone. All the little orphans in a city which is not maternal: born in her guts and not her womb and not her heart if she has one, alone and getting by. None of this is their fault, but it's not that she doesn't _care_.

"And what about you? You've got your own shiny ineffectual little task force. Let's face it bravely together, Bruce: the fact that I am even a priority when the violent crime rate in Gotham is so high just shows how much more important the welfare of the rich and powerful really is here; how corrupt and useless the so called rule of law is."

"You give yourself thrills and make yourself rich to subvert the system, then?"

She clenched her teeth against the sarcasm in his tone, although the corners of her mouth were still tipped up and he had a point.

"You give yourself thrills and make yourself judge, jury and executioner to uphold it? We neither of us pretend to be heroes anymore. Do we, killer?" Liar, she could have said, but it was the message which counted when you wore a mask.

A new group of figures appeared on the roof opposite the museum, moving quickly. The access way to the roof banged open behind her. She grinned, tipping point.

"Well, maybe later. They're here."

"I can see that," he said, still a smooth baritone; still a speculative impersonation in her ear. Then back in reality there was the soft clink of one of his special tools, and she threw herself off the roof as it exploded into fog.

In sequence, as though they had rehearsed it like the amateur professionals they were (though they hadn't), and with bullets shuttling around wantonly and missing everything, as though she were untouchable (though she wasn't). It was a perfectly executed manoeuvre, as though they were a good team.

She spread her arms. The speed with which the ground came up to meet her was a gratification to the thrill seeking element of her motivation.

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AN: Is this the time to debate philosophical differences, Bruce, Selina? Apparently it is.

This is tiny, but I wanted to update as soon as possible. I'm sorry for the wait.


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